Dragon Sisters
by DBAinsw
Summary: The Guardians touched the dragons, and they got burned. It was the only way to save the world, but it forever changed them. Rather than the end, it was the start. The start of their evolution, and a fresh start to the oldest war in the cosmos.
1. A Rude Awakening

**Repost Author Note**

I removed this story from fanficiton dot net once, and I had several reasons for doing so. I got deeper into the cannon and realized I made a bunch of mistakes. I came to really hate one of the characters I made up and couldn't face writing him anymore. I began to feel like no one was reading it. But mostly, I realized one day that I was writing a major science-fiction/fantasy blend into an imported European action cartoon whose main fan base was young girls. That realization came to me one day, and I suddenly became very embarrassed. I removed the story shortly thereafter.

Someone messaged me recently and asked me to re-post this story, at least those parts I had written, even if I didn't intend to work on it anymore. It was not the first such request I had gotten, but it was the most articulate and thoughtful, and it came at a good time for me. It got me to remembering how much I enjoyed this story, and before I knew it, I was working on it again.

Here it is. I completely re-wrote about 30 percent of the original content, removing systematic errors and replacing huge blocks of writing that even I found to unbearably boring to read. I updated the whole story in line with the improvements in my writing style in the years since I started it. And finally, I produced two (TWO) completely new chapters. The end result is a product I no longer find particularly embarrassing.

I don't know when I'll get around to writing more. I've got a solid plan for at least another two chapters, but I'm working on about three other projects right now. By and large, this is only an archiving of this work so other people can hopefully enjoy it as much as I have. There was a time when I would have parceled the chapters out over the course of months to maximize its exposure. I think we're all glad that time is behind me. Please enjoy.

**Original Chapter 1 Author Note**

Mildly mature themes abound in this one, so consider yourself warned. I have no pairings I prefer, so I'll start with the ones from the show and then flip a coin or three to see where things go. The story is based after the second season, diverging during the summer break before the very end of Z is for Zenith. As a quick note for this chapter—while I tried to get the general construction of their houses right, I basically made up all kinds of details, especially for Taranee's house. Forgive the improvisation

I claim no ownership of W.I.T.C.H. and acknowledge the rightful copyright holders, both foreign and domestic. I'm not trying to sell this, and have nothing to do with anyone who does.

**Dragon Sisters**

**Chapter 1: Rude Awakening**

**At a Pleasant, Ritzy Restaurant**

Will shook her head, shrugging off the muzzy feeling that had been bothering her all night and concentrating on what mattered—the fact that Matt was sitting right across their little booth table from her, and was giving her a look that made her heart thunder in her chest. The fuzz in her head was nothing compared to the blush she couldn't keep off her face and the wonderful heartache that was making her breath come just a little shorter than normal.

This date was by far the fanciest she'd ever been on, and each of them wore outfits for the occasion and to pass this swanky restaurant's dress code. She'd chosen a green strapless dress with a ruffled skirt that came to her knees, and by the way Matt's eyes traveled guiltily downward every now and then, she knew she was wearing it better than she'd feared. He was wearing a handsome suit that framed his square shoulders and a blue silk shirt that clung to his chest in a most eye-catching manner. The two of them sat in silence for a while, more out of natural teenage awkwardness than nerves or embarrassment. Finally, Will gathered her thoughts, intent on expressing what she'd felt for so long now, in this seemingly magical moment.

"Matt," She said, almost loosing her train of thought when she noticed his eyes snapping up from her immature cleavage, "I just wanted to tell you, thank you." He seemed confused, but she overrode any question he might have spoken. "You stuck with me, even with all this magical stuff with other worlds started happening, even to the point of getting drawn in yourself as a Reagent of Earth. You've always been there to help me, and I can't tell you how much that means to me. I guess what I'm trying to say is that," Will moved her hands toward his over the table, "I think… I mean I L—"

The moment their hands touched, there was an electric shock between them that stung his hand and forced him to jerk away reflexively. It was utterly unexpected, and so powerful that Will had actually seen the lick of blue lightning hop from her hand to his. Of course, she hadn't felt anything—natural electricity hadn't bothered her since the veil came down.

"Oh my God, Matt, I'm sorry—I didn't mean—" Will began to apologize, but stopped with a tiny shriek when her silverware hopped of the table and latched onto her dress like a magnet picking up a paperclip. "Uh… what the heck?"

Will's confusion turned to panic as she suddenly picked up Matt's silverware too, and tables all around the restaurant began to wobble and shake as every metal item, from plates to silverware to napkin-rings, all began to clatter to the floor and make their way irresistibly toward her.

As her panic rose, she felt a static charge build up on her body like she'd just been rubbing wool socks on a plush carpet, only a thousand times stronger. Her hair, painstakingly flattened with styling gel for the date, took on a life of its own and stood up off her head, making her look disturbingly like a red dandelion. Every eye in the restaurant was on her, and she was crippled with sudden embarrassment, sinking down to hide low in the booth. The charge on her body seemed to be ramping up with every moment, increasing in scale with her embarrassment and then far beyond that.

Matt, recovering from his shock, rushed around the table to help usher her out of the restaurant with as little incident as possible. He reached down to pull her up by her bare shoulders, and Will realized the danger and screamed for him to stop an instant too late.

Matt grabbed Will's shoulders and was instantly jolted by more electricity than any living creature could possibly stand. He flashed with the burning light of it as it ran through his hands, over his shoulders, and directly through his chest and heart. When her panic-fueled strength finally overcame the way the electricity made his hand muscles clench at her body, Matt fell to the floor like a wooden dummy. His hair was on end and his eyes had rolled back in his head, he was smoking slowly where his body hair had been incinerated, and he wasn't moving, not even with an electric tic.

Will drew a breath to scream, but had no voice. She clawed at her throat, but her hands felt strange. She looked at them, only to find that where her body should have been was nothing but a bundle of standing lightning shaped into the vaguest of human forms. She again tried to scream, but this body had no lungs, no throat, and only a basic depression to imitate a mouth. Instead she began to emit rings of brilliant light, leaping auroras of standing electricity that spread out and blew away lighting fixtures, exploded every electrical device in the room, and wracked the fleeing bystanders with murderous force. The scream became a self-perpetuating eternity, this nightmare hell consuming her sanity.

**At the Vandom Residence**

"Will! Will! Please baby, wake up!" Will's mother grabbed her thrashing daughter, trying to hold her still as she writhed on her bed, apparently in agony. The girl screamed again and again, long, drawn-out, blood-curdling things that would certainly wake the neighbors soon as the very first one had woken her.

She was far past being afraid now, and was about to resort to desperate measures when Will suddenly stopped cold, going stiff and arching her back, even under all the weight of her mother's restraining attempts. Suddenly, every light in the room popped in a rain of broken glass, and there was a terrible tingling sensation, a sense as though her ears had popped, and then a symphony of noise from outside.

The light outside the window went out an instant after the room's lights exploded, and soon the night was pitch black besides the glow of the moon and stars, a blackout blanketing the city. Susan Vandom knelt over her daughter, and was not sure whether to hug her close and guard her or back away slowly. Then the decision was made for her, as she heard her little girl crying uncontrollably, and she embraced her in the basest of motherly instincts.

Will was awake again now, her eyes riveted open like someone who'd just stared into a black pit and never wanted it to be dark again. She was crying freely, and she clung on to her mother for dear life out of reflex, all the strife between them forgotten as she recoiled from the horror she'd just experienced. The dream had been real, far too real, and all the death had been graphic beyond anything the movies or books could prepare a person for. Her transformation had been real too, and this time she'd been aware as she lost herself to the seductive delight of pure elemental existence. She'd experienced every moment of her mind and personality dissolving, and it had shaken her to the depths of her being.

"Mommy?" Will begged for some anchorage in a world gone mad, too terrified to be grown-up and desperate for reassurance as she wept. Suddenly, she was a little girl again, a child who was afraid of the dark and the monsters that lurked behind every corner.

"Don't worry baby, mommy's here," her mother said, understanding just how bad things were if her little tomboy was left this vulnerable. She hadn't been called 'mommy' since the divorce. "It… it was just a blackout… a power-surge," she lied, riddled with uncertainty as to just what she'd witnessed moments ago, "the power should be back on by morning, honey. Just try to get back to sleep and—"

"NO!" Will shrieked, the instant she felt her mom try to pull away. She was still in a very bad place, and even a hint of abandonment was more than she could handle. "Please… please just stay…"

"Of-of course," Susan held her child close and began to hum a little lullaby she'd used once upon a time to put baby Wilma down for the night. She'd be lying if she said she didn't enjoy a chance to be there for her little girl again, especially after all the estrangement that was just getting started as she entered her adolescence. At the same time, she couldn't ignore the fact that the infant whose diapers she'd changed had just somehow caused a city-wide blackout. Even now she could hear sirens from emergency vehicles tearing around outside.

Will was slowly coming back to her senses, with her mom there to keep her anchored, and as her heart slowed down to something like a normal pulse rate, she began to realize how embarrassingly childish she was being. Then there was something like a blood-curdling scream on the inside of her head, in Taranee's voice no less, and the greater implications of what she'd just gone through hit her like a brick to the forehead.

"Oh NO!" She shrieked, forgetting she was so close to her mother, who was shocked back off of her. Will stood up so fast that she tripped and landed on her face, then stood up again and brushed past her mom.

"Will, what in the world?" Susan was torn between confusion and a familiar reflex toward anger at the way her daughter refused to be predictable or explain her mysterious habits. The rebellion she could forgive as natural, but she was certain _she'd_ never been this inscrutable as a teenager.

"I-uh-I'm worried about my friends in this blackout!" Will scrambled for some half-believable pretence to get her out the door. Freaking out on her mom was not the best way to get permission to go out into a dark and lawless night, but she couldn't take back the past, and that telepathic scream had been as deeply terrified as any she'd made earlier. What if Taranee's powers had freaked out too? The sound of fire trucks in the distance was suddenly all too ominous.

"Will, I'm certain they'll all be fine," Susan tried to be reasonable, wary of how useless that had proven in the past, "meanwhile, I'm not letting you go out when the city is like this! There could be looters and vandals on the loose, with a blackout this big. It's not safe, and you're _not_ going!"

"Honestly mom, and I mean this in the most respectful way possible—you can't stop me. I feel like I really need to check on my friends! I have… a terrible feeling." It wasn't quite a lie, and that tended to make for greater believability. "I'm _going_, whether I go out the front door or the window is entirely up to you, mom."

"Will!" Susan couldn't help but shriek in her frustration, but then she muscled the punishing instinct under control. Her daughter was easily as stubborn as she was, and was right about not being able to control her. Unless she was willing to wrestle her down and sit on her the whole night, she couldn't keep the girl here. "You will be the death of me," Susan grumbled, and then sighed "but that's true of any teenager. Let me get dressed, and I'll _drive_ you to your friends' houses."

"But—" Will began, and was silenced with an atomic stink-eye from her mother.

"That's the final word, young woman!" Susan put her foot down. It was hardly ideal for Will, but then, time was slipping away as they stood here arguing, and a car would be much faster than running there. "Now you had better get dressed too, I doubt you want to go cavorting around the city in your jammies, honey."

That was enough to distract Will from another attempt to argue. She was wearing nothing but a pair of old terrycloth shorts and a tank top. By the time she'd changed into the first clothes that came to hand—a pair of hip-hugger jeans and a magenta spaghetti-strap top, her mom was also ready, and they were out the door.

A tense silence hung between them as they navigated by a flashlight. The heavy-duty, military-surplus tool was the only thing that had survived an electro-magnetic blast which had knocked out their cell phones and every other electric device in the apartment, and probably the whole city. The electronics in her mom's car had also survived, likely shielded by the metal shell, and they were on their way in no time.

**At the Cook Residence**

Despite the moderate destruction that had come with the blackout, this ungodly hour meant that few people were up and around. That made driving a little bit easier, even without working traffic lights, and they pulled into the somewhat upper-scale neighborhood where Taranee lived in short order. The moment they turned the corner, they saw the smoke and the light and Will's heart froze in her chest, her mother whispering a prayer.

"Not Taranee's house, not T, not her, please," Will chanted, holding out hope until they were close enough to tell exactly which house was blazing in the darkness. Her world seemed to deflate as the fear seized at her, because there could be no mistaking it.

Their car pulled up to the curb, but none of the dozens of people gathered out front in various states of undress took any notice. All these men and women in their boxers and bathrobes were looking hopelessly at the blazing house and gathering in silent empathy around the middle-aged Asian woman and her dark, handsome husband. He was morose, and held her closely as she wailed with unreserved despair.

"My BABY!" she wept, moaning into her husband's red smoking jacket as she stood in her robe. "Oh, God no! Not my little girl!"

"I'm going in there!" Will heard a young man shout brazenly as she and her mother got out of the car, his own voice only just skirting a break into despair. "The fire department will never get here in time, not with the blackout! Someone has to do something!"

"Peter… please… don't delude yourself," Taranee's father cautioned him, "the fire _started_ in her room. It's a flash-blaze, it'll have consumed the entire house within the hour. There's just… no chance…" His wife's renewed sobbing told the rest of the story for him, and he went back to comforting her as he watched his son struggle with the same sense of unbearable impotence he felt turning his heart to the same ash as his home.

"Taranee!" Will shouted, running toward the house before her mom could catch her. She got within ten feet, and then the unbearable heat radiating out from the fire pushed her back, nearly searing her skin. She was crying again before she even realized it, and would quickly have given into despair if it hadn't been for the sudden whispering in her mind.

"_Someone_… _help_…?" the thought-words were uneven and weak, but Will knew she wasn't imagining them, and she stood up with eyes widened. Taranee was somehow still alive in that blaze, and that meant she had to do something! If her powers were freaking out the same way Will's had, she might not be able to control the fire well enough to escape, or she could be trapped under debris, or—oh, she'd never quite gotten over her phobia of fire, had she?

"Irma… I need to get Irma!" Will had one of those instinctual moments that helped her lead the guardians in battle, although this one didn't take magical powers to conclude. She turned and rushed back over to her mom. "We've got to go to Irma's place now!" Will commanded without explanation, and her mom was left speechless as she glanced from the fire, to her daughter, and back again. "NOW mom! We need Irma as soon as—"

The sudden arrival of three fire trucks, two police cruisers, and an ambulance completely overrode Will's attempt to get through to her somewhat shell-shocked mom. Most of the crowd cheered to see them there, everyone assuming someone else had contacted them. But with the phone lines down, how had _anyone_ managed to?

That mystery lasted until Will saw Irma and her dad hop out of one of the police cruisers. Will called out to her friend, wondering if she'd ever been so relieved and surprised in her entire life, and around them, the fire fighters sprang into action.

"How—Why—thank God you're here!" Will finally managed, as she and her friend leapt into an impromptu hug. The brunette was looking haggard; her hair was damp and her jeans were soaked to the knees, her green t-shirt wrinkled like it had been wrung out recently.

"Hey, it's great when people are happy to see you," Irma joked, "but I figure I'm here for the same reason you are." She tapped the side of her head, cautious of being overheard, and then continued in a whisper. "Let me tell you, it was no small task to get my old man on his radio to call help over here—I had to use mind-mojo left and right. We had problems enough at my place."

"Did your powers freak out too?" Will asked in an urgent whisper, eager beyond description to compare notes with someone. "I think I might have caused this blackout—in my sleep!"

"Oh, that's nothing," Irma continued to fight fear with levity, "you can just rename my whole neighborhood, 'Heatherfield Wading Pond.' I woke up out of this _insane_ nightmare and thought I'd wet the bed. Turns out, I burst a few water pipes and wet every bed in a two-block radius… and every carpet, and every basement—the list goes on."

"Complain when your house burns down," Will half-joked back, but it brought both girls to the situation again. "I know she's alive in there, and I don't think the fire can hurt her, but that won't help her if the house falls in on her. And why haven't they started with the hoses yet?"

"Together, you and I took out the electric water pumps and broke the pipes that carry it all," Irma reminded her, totally serious now. "There's not much they can do."

"I guess that means its up to us, then," Will concluded, resolved.

"Right, let's get out of sight so you can guardian-ize us." Irma was pointing to some nearby bushes, and Will followed her over there. Will withdrew the Heart of Candracar from her pocket and it began to float in anticipation of her commands.

"Guardians Un—" Will stopped, choking on the words. She'd just felt a chill like the icy grip of death pass down her spine, and it must have shown on her face.

"What's the matter now?" Irma asked.

"I-I don't know… but I think going guardian would be a bad idea right now." Will had no idea where the sensation came from, but she'd learned not to second-guess her instincts.

"Helloo?" Irma drawled, skeptical, "Friend in mortal danger? That ringing any bells? _We_ _don't_ _have_ _a choice_!"

"NO!" Will settled the issue, thrusting the Heart back into her pocket, "I'm not going to risk our powers self-destructing until we know more about what happened tonight. We'll just have to use what powers we have without the Heart. Come on!"

"Can you get us in?" Will asked, when they found themselves in the shadows, hidden around the far side of the house under Taranee's window. "We need something to block out the heat."

"Oh, I think I have an idea," Irma assured her, "It's just—this'll be a lot harder without guardian powers."

Concentrating, Irma held both hands out at a random patch of lawn. In seconds, there was rumbling, and with a sudden cracking noise, a geyser of water shot out of the ground at an angle and blasted into the burning house. A gout of steam blasted back out for the trouble, but it quelled the worst of the fire around this side of the building.

"Uh, wow," Will said, impressed, "You've been taking your magic vitamins, I see." Irma didn't answer, she was staring at her own hands like she'd just noticed that they belonged to someone else. She snapped out of it before Will could interrogate her, and waved at the damp ground until she'd gathered up a great bubble of water, levitating it into the air behind her.

"Let's go get our friend," was all she said, even as she continued to demonstrate uncommon power. Will was suspicious, but didn't have the time to explore the issue, not with Taranee still trapped.

The inside of the house was a charred mess, and Irma had to put out spot fires here and there as they went, the both of them living in constant fear of the floor giving away underneath them. Still, following the Heart of Candracar led them right to Taranee, who'd burned through her room's floor, then through the floor of the living room below, and now sat on the stone floor of the basement. When the two girls saw their friend, they were immediately terrified for her.

She was naked, curled up in a fetal ball in the center of a calm circle where no fire touched. The spot where she was sitting on the solid concrete floor was glowing white-hot, clearly threatening to melt, and had already cracked terribly. Her legs pulled up against her chest protected what was left of her modesty, but she looked catatonic, and didn't respond to their shouts at all. She was still generating heat, an unbelievable amount, and even on the other side of the basement, it was like standing in front of an open blast-furnace door. Only a veil of water held between them let them get this close, and that was quickly boiling away.

"We have to get her to calm down, to stop burning up so we can get her out of here!" Irma shouted over the astounding roar of the fire.

"I have an idea!" Will shouted, and described it in quick detail as they huddled in the sturdy doorway. In moments, the both of them were concentrating with all their might, trying to get through to her mind where their voices had failed to reach her ears. It didn't seem to work at first, but then, with a sudden hiss, the heat reduced considerably and Taranee perked out of her catatonia.

"_Will_? _Irma_?" her mental voice sounded exhausted, but otherwise unharmed considering the circumstances. "_Where are you_?"

"_Were right over here in the doorway_," the two thought in unison to reinforce the message. "_Can't you see_?"

"_My glasses melted… along with my… with my _clothes," she noticed just how naked she was and tried much more actively to cover herself, even as she stared around blindly. "_I was concentrating—trying to use the heat as a shield against debris… but I think I must have lost myself or..._"

"Over here!" Will shouted, cutting her off and giving her an audible clue as to what direction to face. "Leave the explanations for later and let's get out of here!"

Taranee followed the sound of her voice and faced the doorway, starting to crawl that direction through a gauntlet of flames. A normal person would have been cooked alive by getting that close to blazing fire, but the flames themselves bowed away from the superior heat radiating from Taranee. Will and Irma screamed as the veil of water practically exploded into steam, and the sound made Taranee stop in her tracks.

"What's wrong, guys, please, talk to me!" she shouted, worried, but unable to see what was going on.

"You're too hot!" Irma shouted, "We're learning what baked cookies feel like!"

"You've got to stop it with the heat, Taranee, or we're not going to make it!" Will uncovered her face and peeked out, her eyes stung badly by the wash of dry furnace-air that immediately bathed her face. "Can't you put the fire out?"

"I tried—I tried!" she said, and sobbed. Any tears evaporated before they got off of her eyes. "When I woke up in the fire, I panicked, and it got worse. When I tried to stop it, it _got worse_! I don't know what's wrong!" and her wail was so hopeless that Will was certain that they'd lose her again.

"Just calm down Taranee," Will cautioned her, barely able to keep her words even with the way her skin was trying to evaporate off her bones, "if you can just stop your own heat, we can get you out of here."

"But if I cool off—the fire—"

"You have to trust us! We won't let you down!"

"I…" Taranee hesitated, "I trust you." It sounded like she was talking more to herself than to them. She closed her eyes and concentrated. Immediately, it was like the difference between the beach at noon and the beach at night, all the remaining flames far enough away to pale in comparison to the scorching heat that had just faded away. As she'd warned, those other flames moved in to blaze where the convection of Taranee's heat was no longer pushing it away. Two walls of fire slapped in at her like the jaws of molten beast, and Irma stepped up.

"Water," She said resolutely, a jet of it lashing from her palms to sweep back the flames. Another cloud of steam and smoke bloomed from the contact, making the crumbling basement a sauna. The water blast weakened the far wall, and a ceiling beam that had been half-eaten by fire cracked and fell without warning.

"Quintesence!" Will snapped quickly, and a lightning bolt jumped from her hand. It was the first time she'd used her power since the nightmare, and the force of it was several times what she'd expected. It struck the beam and incinerated it to ash, the iridescent heat of it causing an actual thunderclap. The whole house shook precariously, and the noise made their ears ring.

"What was that?" a distant voice shouted from upstairs.

"I don't know, it came from the basement—let's go!"

"Irma, take care of them," Will ordered, as she rushed in to get Taranee and guide her through the rubble. She reached down to help her friend up, mindful of how embarrassing this situation was for her, but had to pull away in shock immediately. Despite the reduction, her skin was still as hot as an oven's insides, and had nearly seared some skin off Will's hand. "Holy crap, Taranee, you're still too hot to touch! What does that feel like?"

"What are you talking about—I'm as cool as I can manage—"  
"Who's down here?" an anonymous male voice asked in the background. "We're here to help!"

"You didn't see anyone," Irma said, waving her hands and speaking mysteriously, all quite a bit more theatrics than the situation warranted.

"I… didn't… see… anyone," the firefighter repeated.

"You're going to leave your fire-blanket here," Irma told him, "you used it to fight the fire. Now get going."

Will waited in this space of calm for Irma to show up, and the two of them wrapped Taranee in the thick fire blanket and led her out of the basement. They retraced their steps back up the way they had come, the ruined wood creaking dangerously under their feet, and then snuck out of the back door again. They spent a whispering moment organizing their story, and Irma primed her power, and then they made their stumbling way around the building.

"Hey everybody, lookie what we found unconscious out back!" Irma shouted gleefully. She and Will flanked their friend close on either side, enduring the last bit of intense heat coming off of her with the help of the blanket. This meant they were positioned to ward people off when the inevitable rush of onlookers came in with all their astonished happiness.

"Taranee!" the girl's mother bowled over a whole crowd of rubberneckers, scattering them like she was a linebacker four times her size, and dashed in to sweep her daughter into a hug. By dint of extreme concentration, Irma managed to keep her from noticing how hot Taranee was, and staved off kisses that would result in fried lips. "Oh, thank God! Thank God!" her mother moaned as she tried to suffocate Taranee in her hug. She stopped suddenly as her husband and son came over, her expression turning to one of fury, tears running down her face. "Don't you ever scare me like that again!" she shouted, shaking her gently.

"Oh, my little girl," Taranee's father gave her a similar hug, Irma expanding her efforts to him and keeping their little secrets safe. "I thought we'd lost you."

"Oh, come on Mom, Dad," Taranee complained, "not in front of my friends." Under extremely different circumstances, the situation would have been delightful. She couldn't remember the last time her parents had been this openly affectionate. Her brother just looked happy, and gave them all thumbs up as he collapsed onto the lawn from the stress he'd put himself through.

A storm of questions were forthcoming, and the girls threaded the gauntlet with a combination of bluffing, omission, and outright lies. With serious help from Irma's overworked power of suggestion, everyone eventually bought the story that Taranee had pulled off her burning nightclothes and escaped through a window in the fire blanket that she, being a paranoid young woman, kept under her bed. Her friends had found her blind and nearly naked out back, and here they were. Mr. Cook nearly ruined everything by being a shrewd and inquisitive fellow, but Irma befuddled him after the third probing question and Will introduced her mom as a distraction.

The night wore on at a lightning pace as Will began to plan out the rest of their task. As Taranee eventually cooled within the temperature of tongue-searing hot chocolate, she was able to borrow some clothes from her neighbor without worrying about setting them on fire, although she was still practically blind. Her head was too muddled to send thoughts to Cornelia or Hay Lin just then, so Will turned to the task of connecting their parents and, with Irma's help, manipulating them.

"…and this is Officer Lair, Irma's dad," Will said, completing the triangle. Her mom, Mrs. Cook, and the big police officer greeted one another. "Some kind of crazy night we've been having, huh? Anyway, I'm still worried about Cornelia and Hay Lin, so mom…"

"Yes, of course Will," Will's mom nodded and got out her keys, arousing immediate curiosity from the others.

"You've been checking on your daughter's friends?" Mr. Lair asked, intrigued. "Because Irma convinced me to do the same thing. If you want, I could give you a police escort. I need to complete a sweep of the city anyway and report back to the precinct HQ. With the phones out, reports on cruiser radios are the only way to know where we're needed."

"If you're all going to be together," Mrs. Cook cut in, prompted by Irma's powers, "could you take Taranee with you? I know she'd be much more comfortable with her friends than staying at our neighbor's house for the night. She said she wouldn't be able to sleep without knowing her friends were safe, and I know I'd feel better if she went with a police officer to check on them."

"Sure, that would be fine," Will's mom agreed, "she can sleep over at our place tonight and we'll all meet up again tomorrow."

"You know, our house was flooded when those pipes burst," Mr. Lair added, "Do you think Irma could stay at your house? My wife and son have already taken up the only sleeping bags, and I know Irma would sooner eat a frog than share a bag with her little brother."

"Uh, yeah, I guess that would be fine. We've got… some room," Susan Vandom shook her head, almost noticing some of Irma's influence as the girl began to tire. Her work was becoming sloppy after so much strain. "Come on, we'd better go if we hope to get any sleep tonight. Mr. Hale's apartment is halfway across town."

**In Susan Vandom's Car**

In the car, Will had one window seat and Irma had the other, the better to keep an eye on Taranee between them. Every now and then she would nod off, too tired to keep her eyes open, even with the dire circumstances. Every time she fell asleep, she started to heat up like an electric lighter, and had to be poked and cajoled awake. Irma used her power to wet her hands and the water sizzled from her fingers as she did her part. Will just used a low-yield electric shock and avoided the situation entirely. With Irma's help, Will's mom was kept in the dark.

"Taranee, you've got to get your power under control!" Will whispered urgently. "We'll never keep it quiet if you burn a scorch mark into the upholstery or vaporize your clothes again!"

"Easy for you to say…" Taranee mumbled, her eyes developing deep bags as she yawned, actually exhaling a tiny lick of flame. "God, I… I burned down my house… all my possessions… everything my family owns… and all of that hasn't even really sunk in for me yet! I just want to wake up and find out this was all another nightmare."

"You had a nightmare, too?" Will and Irma asked at the same time. They looked at one another, realizing that they'd glossed over this earlier when Taranee's plight had distracted them.

"Just before I burst the pipes," Irma beat Will to her explanation, "I dreamed that I was swimming at the beech with my family and all of W.I.T.C.H.. I dove down, and when I came up, the water followed me before I realized it. The tidal wave swept everyone away, destroying the city. I could see everyone's bodies… and I wanted to scream, but I'd become elemental me again, like when we fought Super-Cedric. I could feel my mind wasting away, and I was just screaming and screaming, and I woke up to find water shooting into the house from every pipe in the building. It took a while to figure out I'd somehow done the same thing all over the place."

"Oh man," there was a moment's silence as the two girls considered how harrowingly familiar that dream sounded.

"I had the same dream, except I electrocuted Matt and then a bunch of bystanders," Will admitted quickly, leaving out details where details weren't needed.

"Ditto for me," Taranee said, eyes widened by the disturbing memories, "but I burned so hot that I lit the sky on fire and initiated nuclear Armageddon."

The other two girls stared at their friend like she was a bomb that might explode at any second. They each edged away from her slightly, and not because of the heat.

"Oh come on you two, I read a lot of sci-fi, okay?" Taranee looked hurt by their mistrust, even as she realized it was mostly a joke. "Can you really blame me if my paranoid fears about my powers are a little more sophisticated than yours?"

"But is that really all these dreams are?" Will speculated out loud. "We've shared dreams before, and some of them have predicted the future. We all woke up screaming with our powers going haywire. There's definitely a pattern here."

"Maybe, but I'm the only one having trouble controlling my powers now," Taranee pointed out. "That breaks the pattern."

Will and Irma were suspiciously silent.

"Guys?" Taranee asked, pointedly. Then she winced against a headache and waited for an explanation while trying not to pass out or heat up again.

"I've been generating an electric charge since I woke up. I'm not sure, but I think if I let it get out of hand, I'll become a human magnet, and start 'qunetss-ing' people and things by accident besides. I've been shooting electricity into the ground with every step to keep the charge down," Will admitted, lifting her leg to show off the scorch mark on her sneaker bottom around a hole where foot could be seen past charred sock. "I've been shocking you with the excess to keep it regulated here in the car."

"Gee, glad I could be service!" Taranee snapped, upset, but too tired to focus it properly. "When did you plan on telling us about this, before or after one of us got accidentally fried?" Her headache was too strong to let her point out further the stupidity of that behavior.

"Yeah, well, I'm not exactly sweating over here," Irma helped deflect some blame from Will. "Actually, I'm pretty sure I'm leaking." Both her friends gaped openly at her, increasing the natural embarrassment one would feel at admitting that kind of thing. Now that they were looking, it was pretty obvious that she was unnaturally damp, especially considering the fire. Water was beading on her face and she had the look of someone who'd just come in from being caught in a rainstorm. "Thing is, I can't tell if I'm creating water out of my body, absorbing it, or just condensing it out of the air."

"Ho-OW," Taranee was interrupted by another shock from Will, and she paused to give the red-head a dirty look, "How does that make a difference, exactly?"

"Well, it matters to me!" Irma explained indignantly. "I already know I'm going to leave a puddle every place I sit down until I fix this. I'd _like_ to know if I'm going to retain water, or if I'm going to dehydrate, so I can figure out what to do. I'd rather not bloat like a corpse or wind up a shriveled husk because I was burying my head in the sand instead of dealing with this."

"Oh…" Taranee said, chastised. They all fell to silence, and the dark girl was back to nodding off in no time. Will shocked her again, and because she hadn't discharged recently, it was powerful and painful enough draw a little shriek from the nearly-sleeping girl.

"Are you girls alright back there?" Ms. Vandom took a break from the strenuous task of driving without streetlights or traffic signals to check on her three charges. The girls all gave her big, fake smiles, and she turned back to the road.

"Are you sure?" Will whispered, not at all happy with the situation.

"Trust me," Irma was confident about this, at least, "She's certain we've been talking about the latest issue of _Cosmo_ back here."

"I didn't even know you could _do_ that," Taranee mentioned, dodging Will's next electric discharge and poking her with a scalding-hot finger in revenge. Will gasped and shook the hand with its tiny new burn, muttering evil things and discharging her electricity into the car floor. The exchange was all in good fun, and did much to alleviate their mutual nerves about the frightening things happening to their powers.

"Well, if nothing else, my mind-mojo has been seriously stronger," Irma bragged, "I've been doing stuff I never imagined. Come to think of it, that's another point in the 'this is a W.I.T.C.H. situation' column. Maybe our powers are expanding again, like when the veil came down."

"Uh, guys?" Taranee tried to interrupt, but was ignored for the moment.

"Oh, this had better not be the same thing!" Will sounded murderous, "Last time was all giggles and lollipops, but if they knew this one was coming and they didn't warn us…" she paused, and lightning plaid around her fingers and flickered inside her eyes. Then she deflated. "We destroyed _tons_ of property, maybe hurt people, and Taranee is officially homeless. If those fogies in Candracar could have stopped this… they have some explaining to do."

"GUYS!" Taranee shouted, and both girls were startled, following her wide-eyed gaze out the windows. The city around them was devastated.

"Crap—it looks like this place was hit by an earthquake!" Irma said, and she was right. All around them, the high-density housing blocks and commercial buildings of downtown Heatherfield were shattered and half-crumbled. Nothing had actually collapsed, but several buildings looked to be close. "Do you think Cornelia…?" Irma didn't have the heart to finish the question.

"I don't think there's any doubt. I mean, take a look at that!" Will pointed out the front window, and her friends leaned over to follow her finger. Ahead of them, the apartment complex where Cornelia's mother rented a high-end bungalow loomed in the darkness, lit only by moonlight. Even in the sparse lighting, it was obvious that something unbelievable had happened, because the trees and grasses cultivated on its roof and balconies had overgrown until the building seemed more like a wizened jungle temple than a metropolitan condominium.

"Goodness, what is going on tonight?" Ms. Vandom wondered aloud from the driver's seat. "Was there really an earthquake? Maybe that caused the flood, the fire, and the blackout? But… I don't remember feeling any shaking when the blackout happened, what about you, honey?"

"I was… I was asleep, Mom," Will reminded her, not eager to recall her embarrassing screams and childish clinginess. Instead she looked around at the cracked stone and shattered windows, wondering how much all that damage would cost to fix and grateful nothing had collapsed. If they got out of the night causing nothing but property damage with this malfunction, they'd be unbelievably lucky.

**At the Hale's Apartment Building**

Irma's dad pulled over his police cruiser and stepped out to scan the streets with a flashlight and report to his HQ, and he waved to them as they pulled by. Moments later, Ms. Vandom pulled her car up in the street outside Cornelia's building, not even bothering to park legally in the hard blackout darkness. Everyone piled out of the car, and they immediately found most of Cornelia's neighbors standing in the lobby our out in front of their apartment building.

"I'm telling you, these plants have got to be some kind of prank!" one woman exclaimed loudly to her beefy, thick-necked husband. Both were wearing bath robes and looked at the side of their building with gas lanterns. "The fact that the earthquake happened at the same time that someone replaced our shrubberies with _this_ mess is only a coincidence!"

"Excuse me, miss," Will scooted up and got her attention. "Do you know where the Hale family is right now?"

"Oh…" she seemed put-off by being interrupted in the middle of her harangue, but smiled at the cute young women checking on their friends in this disaster. "Well, frankly my dear, I haven't seen young Cornelia or that adorable little Lillian at all tonight. I know their mother was supposed to be out of town visiting relatives, and I suppose her father stayed late at his bank on business…"

"Thanks anyway," Will had to suppress a flash of panic as she turned back toward Irma and Taranee, her mother a ways to the side, staring at the building in amazement.

"What do you think happened to them? Where are they?" Irma asked, looking a bit more worried than one might expect, considering her history of friction with the tall blonde.

"Who knows?" Taranee sounded annoyed, and she was wincing as she held her head. "I can't hear my own thoughts right now, much less anyone else's. She probably hid when her powers started malfunctioning. We're just going to have to go in and search for her."

"Correction," Will eased her back and had her sit on a public bench, "_we're_ going to go in and search for her. _You're_ going to sit on this fireproof bench and think cold thoughts while you concentrate on not setting things on fire or burning people."

"But—" Taranee began to protest, until Irma flicked some water off her fingertips and the droplets exploded into steam before touching her skin. "Um… okay. I'm going to try and get my head clear and contact Hay Lin. Hurry, guys, we need to get everyone together as soon as possible."

Will and Irma nodded and smiled reassurance at their friend, and then made a break for the building. They were practically inside when Will's mom noticed them.

"Where are you going?" It was all she could do to keep from shrieking in frustration. "That building was just hit by an earthquake! It's not safe!"

Irma turned at the door and gave her a hard look, and that sent her over to have a pleasant conversation with the older couple still speculating on who had exchanged their manicured display plants for untamed specimens from the botanical garden. Will was actually a bit upset by this one, as there had been an incredible look of anguish on her mother's face before Irma's power had sent her away, but there was just no time to stop and worry about it.

Inside was almost as bad as outside, with nervous people lingering in every doorframe, examining cracks in their walls or standing around with coffee mugs, chatting the night away. Every potted plant in the lobby had burst out of its container and there was dirt and tangled roots everywhere. Will and Irma slipped past the residents, mind-controlled their way past the superintendent in the stairwell once he confirmed that the upstairs was evacuated and off-limits, 'borrowed' an emergency lantern from where it had been left to light the stairs, and were breathless at the top of the apartment complex in minutes. That's where they ran into their first _real_ obstacle.

"What the heck?" Irma cursed even more than that under her breath as she leaned against the frosted glass door that separated the stairwell from the top floor of the apartment complex. "It's stuck! I don't get it—I saw Cornelia's neighbors down there, it must have been passable earlier!"

"Look!" Will pointed to the bottom of the door, where a shadow of knotted roots could just be seen through the glass' decorative coating. "It must have grown out since the floor was evacuated. It's wedged in there good… I don't think we'll be able to push the door open."

"Great! What now?" Irma sat down on the stairs with a loud splashing noise, sending a stream trickling down the steps.

"Come on, Irma," Will smirked, and an electric aurora started to play around her fingertips. "We've destroyed the city's power grid, the water pipes, a beautiful suburban home, most of the downtown area, and we don't even _know_ what Hay Lin did! You think I'm going to worry about a glass door at this point?"

"You were always one for the _direct_ approach," Irma half-taunted, but shared Will's smirk. It _was_ kind of silly to worry about what they broke at this point.

"Still, there's no need to send broken glass flying all over the place." With that, Will stepped up to the door and placed her glowing hand near the edge where the hinges would be on the other side. Homing in on the feel of the metal reacting to her quintessence force, she put her hand directly opposite to the hinge and blasted some electricity into it. The hinge popped off like it had been shot out of a cannon, and there was a loud noise as it crashed into the stone façade on the opposite side of the lobby. "Umm," Will winced at the loud bang, "That was supposed to be a bit more discreet."

"Just hurry up and get the door open," Irma moaned, "The draft in here is killing me in these wet clothes!"

Will blew off the other hinge, and with Irma's help, gently lowered the door forward into the stairwell. Stepping around it, they made their way onto the floor where Cornelia's apartment had always been, and instead they found a tropical rainforest. Every surface was grown over by roots and leafy branches, vines hung down from the ceiling, and it smelled like a cross between an open sewer and a flower garden.

"Hello?" a tiny voice came from the thickest of the foliage outside Cornelia's apartment. Irma lifted their lantern higher, and a smaller light approached from the underbrush, until it finally burst open and revealed Lillian. She was filthy, her pink nightie covered in soil, and she carried a dim toy flashlight in one hand and her beloved cat Napoleon in the other arm. "Will? Irma? Is it really you?"

"Lillian?" Will knelt down and opened her arms, and the little girl fell right into her embrace, tears flowing freely.

"Oh Will," Lillian sobbed, "it was horrible! Everything was shaking, and the plants all blew up, and mommy wasn't home, and Cornelia—she was eaten by a monster tree! And then it was all dark, and I was all alone, and—and—I want my mommy!"

"Shh, shh, it'll be okay now. We're here, and we won't let any monster plants get you." Will made questioning eyes at Irma, who could only shrug. Then Will gave Irma a much more serious stare, one with lightning bolts literally sparking from her eyes, and the brunette finally got her point.

"You know Lillian," Irma bent down next to them, "you're probably dreaming right now—I mean, having a nightmare."

"_Sniff_—what?" Lillian turned her puffy, red eyes to Irma. "But this is all so real…"

"Oh, no, come on!" Irma gave her a big smile as she started to work her mind, "plants don't eat people! None of this stuff can actually be happening, so you _must_ be having a dream." Lillian didn't seem convinced, even with Irma's mind control adding weight to the absurd argument, and so Irma played her last gambit. "In fact, I'll bet any second now, something truly absurd will happen, and prove this is a dream." While Lillian rubbed tears from her eyes, Irma winked at Napoleon several times.

The enchanted cat took her hint, and wiggled out of the little girl's grip. The Heart of Earth temporarily stored within him had given him many powers, and all of them were a secret from his nominal owner.

"You know, you really shouldn't listen to Irma," the cat said, while licking one of his paws. "She's a terrible fibber."

"Okay…" Lillian mumbled, her eyes blown up wide, "I'm dreaming! And… I think I want to wake up now…"

"That's right sweetie," Irma patted her hair, "just close your eyes tight, and when you open them, the nightmare will be all over." She pressed in with her power of suggestion at the same time, and Lillian fell into a deep sleep the moment her eyes closed.

"We're leaving her in your care while we figure out what happened to Cornelia," Will said, as she gently nestled the child onto some soft leaves, "Do you have any idea what's going on here?"

"Frankly," the cat made a disdainful sound, "I was certain all blame for this rested with you guardians. Then again, what do I know? No one tells me anything."

"Yes, okay, we get the message," Will grinned at the ensorcelled feline, "after we salvage Cornelia and get this situation under control, we'll negotiate."

"The solution to my angst will involve cream and tuna—lots of cream and tuna," the cat gave an amused flick of the tail, and took up a sentinel's watch over Lillian.

"I don't think electricity blasts are going to do the job this time," Irma said. She'd gone over to inspect Cornelia's apartment, the epicenter of the earthquake and the plant explosion, and found the door completely walled off by roots and vines. "Any more bright ideas, Will?"

"Well, Taranee could take these things out in a cinch, but she'd probably burn the whole building down in the state she's in right now." Will considered the problem, thinking in silence as she watched water drip from Irma's outfit and slide down the foliage she'd wedged herself into. Her eyes literally flashed with light as she got an idea. "Irma, plants are full of water! What if you pull the water out—they might wither away!"

"Huh…" Irma thought about it, and then matched Will's smile. "Okay, one batch of sun-dried vegetables, coming right up!" She drew her hands up and used some of her power to whip all the moisture off of her body and over to one side—a futile act of defiance as she was wet again in seconds. "Only… you know… dried by me, instead of the sun…"

"Just do it!" Will grumbled.

Irma held out her hands, and all the plants rattled to attention like they'd just been jerked up on hidden strings. With a grunt of effort, Irma clenched both fists, and a million droplets of water squelched out of the plant litter like the spray from exploding water balloons. The withered dregs left behind disintegrated the moment they touched them, and the door was clear. Unfortunately, it opened inward, and that side, presumably, was still choked with plants. It didn't take long for Will to repeat her hinge-annihilation trick, though, and the two girls pried the door out of its frame, revealing the heart of the jungle.

The moment they dipped their lantern into the pitch-dark rainforest that had once been an urban apartment, a muffled sound of distress began to emanate from somewhere in the foliage. For a while, they just couldn't localize it, and they actually had to squeeze inside and search for a bit. Eventually, though, Irma found a pair of blue eyes peeking out from some dense growth at roughly knee-height, and managed to rip off the vines that held Cornelia gagged.

"GAH!" the blonde gasped for a single, relieved breath as her mouth was uncovered. "Thank goodness you guys came!" Cornelia used her first breath to express gratitude. Apparently, she was bound from head to toe to the apartment floor by a huge weight of roots and vines, so much that they covered every inch of her body. "Now, _what took you so long_? I've been trapped in here for almost an hour! I mean, here I am in serious distress, and you two are bumbling around like two blind—mmmfff!"

Cornelia's tirade was cut short when the vines Irma had ripped away came to life and wrapped themselves back onto her skin, re-gagging her. Will and Irma just looked at one another, and spontaneously burst out laughing. When they were under control again, it was Irma who spoke first.

"What's the matter, Corny, don't you control plants? Did we have a little revolution or something? The slaves became the masters, right?" Her grin was epic, and the muffled curses coming back from Cornelia were truly vile.

"Enough fun, Irma, just do you dehydration trick and get her out of there," Will settled things with a simple command. "It's getting late, and I'm still worried about Hay Lin."

"Okay… if I have to. Still, it seems a shame to steal Cornelia away from her new admirers." Even as she taunted, Irma squelched the vines holding her friend's mouth shut, and so Cornelia's response was not gagged.

"Huh, very funny, Irma, now would you two stop fooling around? Just use the Heart, Will. I'll be out of here in no time!"

"Right, because our powers _without_ being magnified by the heart are working SO well." Will shook her head. "No, you tell us what happened to you, we'll find a way to get you out."

"Ug, fine!" Cornelia rolled her eyes and began to talk. "I woke up tonight from a nightmare where every step I took made an earthquake and knocked over buildings—until I became an elemental, like back when we schooled Cedric. I woke up, but the earthquake was real! I was trying to get Lillian to safety when that stupid plant mom keeps by the door just reached out and grabbed me! Oh no, wait—do you know if Lillian is alright?"

"We found her outside and convinced her she was dreaming," Will answered, so Irma could concentrate on her task. "She'll be fine."

"Oh," Cornelia sighed in relief, and then went on, "I used my power to try and get the thing off me, but it just grew bigger! Every time I try to use my powers to control the plants, they just grew. All they seem to want to do is give me a big, dirty, stinky hug, but even that was making it hard to breathe."

"I still think this is like a revolt, with the plants being the oppressed villagers who rise up against the evil Queen Corny," Irma said. Cornelia gave her a dirty look and she stuck her tongue out in reply.

"Keep it up, Irma," Cornelia warned, "We'll just see how long it takes me to help _you_ out the next time you're being molested by an army of grabby vines."

"You know, considering our history as guardians, I might have to take that threat seriously," Irma replied, frowning. Her frown became a glare as her efforts to rip off the vines were stalled. "Ug! These things are resisting my powers," she grunted as she tried to remove a larger block of vines, only for some of the one's she'd already pulled to grow back at alarming speed. "Will, give me a hand here!"

"If I shock them, I shock Cornelia too," Will threw her hands up in apology. "I guess I could try to animate some garden tools or something. You wouldn't happen to have a lawnmower hidden in here someplace, would you, Cornelia?"

"Be serious!" Cornelia snapped, looking terrified with her hands still trapped and her powers useless. "We haven't got anything like that, and my dad's hair clippers and the food processor are not going to make a dent in these things!"

"GUYS, I FOUND YOU!" The shattered glass doors leading to the balcony were suddenly and explosively cleared of foliage as a gigantic blast of wind crushed into the apartment and knocked Will and Irma off their feet.

"Uh… Hay Lin?" Irma was the first to recognize the voice, although the blast of wind had also been a strong clue. "Where are you? And could you tone it down a bit?"

"Sorry," the word was much softer, barely whispered, but it still accompanied a whirlwind blast of icy-chill air. "I can't stop the wind from coming when I talk, and I've been stuck invisible and flying since I woke up."

"Brrr," Will held her bare arms against the chill gusts of wind, "Hay Lin, I'm glad you're okay, but if that's the way your power has messed up, you'll have to keep your mouth shut! I'm just cold, but Irma's problem makes it so she can't stay dry! You'll turn her into a popsicle!"

"Yeah! I'm already lightly frosted over here," the brunette cut in, her teeth chattering. When she stood up, her clothes clinked as bits of ice broke away and fell off.

"Don't listen to them, Hay Lin," Cornelia said, struggling mightily to get at least one hand out before the vines closed in again, and failing. "Maybe now that you're here we can make some progress. These two were bungling the job, big time."

"Cornelia, you're right," Will told her, "and also: shut up before I take Irma's advice and let the dang vines keep you. Concentrate on Taranee out by the street and see if her telepathy is working again yet." Now that she had a plan, the orders came naturally to the young red-head. "Irma, wet down those vines. When they're soaked, Hay Lin, I want you to freeze them. Cornelia's dad plays golf… right? So…"

Will felt around with her electrically charged sense for metal until she located some golf clubs in a corner. Drawing out a pair, she hefted them, grinned at the other girls, and stood aside as they leapt into action. In moments, the vines were frozen, and Will tossed Irma a nine iron while she took up a titanium driver.

"Hay Lin, back off so we don't accidentally hit you. Irma… let's prune some hedges." Will delivered the final line with mocking dramatic flair, and everyone groaned.

"Okay… that was so terrible, _I_ should have said it!" Irma giggled, and the two began to hack at the vines, which shattered near the roots and did not grow back.

"_Guys_?" the voice came directly to their minds, and Taranee was with them then, in spirit if not in person. "_I think I'll be able to connect our minds again now… hold on and…_"

"_Can you here me_?" Hay Lin's excited thoughts washed through their brains like a tide. "_Oh yes! I thought I was gonna explode if I didn't get a chance to tell you all what happened to me tonight! I mean, afterward, when I realized I was stuck invisible and I couldn't get Taranee to hear my thoughts—and then I heard her scream in my mind—I knew I had to find you, and when I saw T's house burnt down, and Irma's flooded—but I'm here now. Anyway… you guys… the Silver Dragon… I…_"

"Oh no… the whole restaurant?" Cornelia asked, her joy at wrenching her hands out of the vines dampened by the news.

"What about your family?" Irma broke in, distraught. "Was anyone hurt? What happened?"

"_Mom and Dad were out at a late movie, and grandma is in Candracar._" Some soft sniffling noises came from one corner of the room, and tiny whirlwinds built among the leaves in sympathy for Hay Lin's distress. "_But my home… my family's livelihood… it was wiped off the map… and I don't even know what happened! All I remember is that I was having this dream where I was singing for this band, but when I hit a long note, it caused a tornado!_"

"_And then you became an elemental again, like when we fought Cedric_?" Taranee supplied. The sound of Hay Lin gasping, along with the accompanying blast of wind, made interesting counterpoint to Irma and Will's grunts of effort as they did their indoor gardening.

"_Oh no, are we sharing dreams again?_" In a silent conversation set to the sound of expensive golf equipment becoming dented junk, Taranee caught Hay Lin up on everything that had happened to the rest of them. When she finished, the invisible Asian girl was so staggered that mumbled an astonished "Wow," dipping the temperature in the room a good three degrees.

"_Guys, this is a nightmare_!" Hay Lin didn't hesitate to state the obvious. "_When my parents get home and see that a freak tornado wrecked our entire street, and they can't find me—what am I going to do? They'll think I'm dead! What are _WE_ going to do? We've destroyed half the city tonight_!"

"Freedom!" Cornelia interrupted that dire question as she yanked her feet out of her frozen vine coffin, jumped up and threw her hands out in unbalanced excitement, and was promptly grabbed around the wrist by a vine on the wall. "EEEK!" she turned to start smacking girlishly at the plant, only for another fifteen vines to stretch toward her. "NoNoNo—GET OFF!"

"Stop that!" Will launched an electric barrage at the vines just as Cornelia pulled the first one off. Her blast was far larger than she intended, and the flash of light blinded them all as the thunderclap rocked the whole building. Fortunately, the vines took a direct hit, incinerating them. Unfortunately, Irma had to douse the smoking hole left in the wall before the fire could spread. Shouts of alarm came up from the streets below, but somehow, Lillian hadn't been woken by the noise.

"Hay Lin," Cornelia sighed as she looked at the charred crater in her apartment wall, trying to scrape mud from her bare skin and the mismatched shirt and shorts she'd pulled on in the dark, "I'm sorry about your house, but look on the bright side. As soon as we get you visible again, you'll have an excuse people will believe. How am I going to explain _all_ _this_ with an earthquake?"

While she said her piece, the plants around Cornelia smoldered feebly and died away, and the harried earth guardian sent Will a look of dubious appreciation, only for her eyes to bulge out the next moment. Every other vine in the apartment was stretching in her direction, stopped from seizing her only by the fact that they were too short to reach.

"This is SO gross," Cornelia said, carefully sticking to the area Will and Irma had cleared of plants, "I'm going to be having nightmares about tonight, I just know it."

"Let's just get back outside," Will groaned, staring at her hands in subdued distress as she remembered the way Matt had died in her nightmare.

Everyone agreed, and with Irma and an invisible, floating Hay Lin to clear a path, Cornelia managed to collect her dozing sister without suffering more than a casual poking by the remaining plants. Will brought up the rear, so that when they integrated themselves back into the crowd in the lobby and filed out into the warm summer night, she didn't see what was waiting for her outside until it was too late.

"Wilma Vandom!" Her mother shouted, ambushing her with a tone that promised a ferocious argument, "I just don't know what to do with you!" Will and her mother were suddenly the center of attention, even the reunion of Taranee with Cornelia and Hay Lin took a sideline as Ms. Vandom blew her top.

"Mom, what are you—"

"I know something strange is going on here tonight, Will," Ms. Vandom stared daggers at her daughter, but the look was underscored with a terrified layer of confusion. "And somehow, I know it has something to do with you and your friends! You don't get an earthquake, a blackout, a housefire, a flood, and a tornado all in one town, in one night, unless the causes are related."

"Tornado? Mom, what are you—" Will's evasion was overpowered by her mother's concern.

"Mr. Lair told me that your friend Hay Lin's family restaurant was leveled by a tornado! A tornado! In Heatherfield! Hay Lin is missing, and her parents are going crazy. Not only that, but this freak, localized earthquake is centered right on the Hales' apartment building, and the firefighters couldn't find the cause of the fire at the Cooks' house. All that, and I know…" Will's mom's eyes were bright with tears, "I know that you had something to do with the blackout! Now I need you to tell me what's going on! Are you in danger? Baby, if you were hurt, I don't know what I would—"

Will's mother paused, frozen stiff right in the middle of grilling the truth out of her daughter. Will felt her heart pounding all the way up in her throat, and managed to catch her breath only with difficulty as she realized something had interceded to save her.

"Thanks, Irma, but what took you so long?" Will asked, glancing around her statue-stiff mother to find her friends. All of them had shock-widened eyes too, and Irma was looking totally confused from over where she was using Taranee's involuntary heat to warm the chill out of her fingers.

"Can't claim credit for this one," Irma admitted, and hesitantly pointed over behind Will, drawing her attention back to the crowd. When she turned, she quickly found that the entire crowd had frozen stiff, almost like they were paused in time.

"What the…?" was as far as Will got, before a dreadful night reached its perfectly awful conclusion.

"Guardians of the Infinite Worlds!" a booming, elderly voice, thick with authority assaulted them all, and their heads whipped around in a common motion to find a tall, wizened, extravagantly-bearded man in a white robe standing there in the dark streets with them.

"Tibor?" Will recognized him as The Oracle's right-hand man and a senior member of the Council of Candracar, but to find him here was so unexpected that she didn't believe her eyes at first. "Um, I suppose I'm glad to see you! Listen, something is going _seriously_ wrong with our guardian powers—"

"I'll say!" The old man cut her off, sounding angrier than they'd ever heard him, "You've been using them to wreck a defenseless city and terrorize innocent people!"

"WHAT?" Will growled, and all the other guardians made similar sounds of furious protest at that vile, totally unfair evaluation of the night's trials.

"Are you kidding me, you think I did this on purpose?" Cornelia looked ready to maim, and Irma actually grabbed her to hold her back.

"Our powers aren't working right!" Will informed the councilman. "They're going crazy, and we've suffered as much as anyone because of it! I mean, for goodness sake, Taranee and Hay Lin are homeless!"

"Be that as it may," Tibor began, clearly having trouble believing them, "The council has been informed of this destruction, and I cannot allow you to continue to roam free."

"So… are you here to help us get back control or…?" Taranee trailed off, not liking where this was going.

"I'm here," Tibor drew himself up to his full, not unimpressive height, "To place you all under arrest on the charge of criminal misuse of your guardian powers."

All of the girls began to protest all at once, and Will, Irma, and Cornelia actually looked ready for a fight. Before things got out of hand, Tibor held up both hands, and his glower of authority was so overpowering that they actually became quiet.

"I'll warn you now, if you are innocent of these charges, and I believe, from your record, that this is not at all unlikely," he said this almost grudgingly, "resisting arrest will irrevocably ruin any chance of being vindicated during your trial."

"Trial?" Taranee said, actually sounding relieved. "We get a trial?"

"If you come quietly, you will be tried by the council," Tibor acknowledged her hopeful tone. "If you are truly not at fault for this mess, you have nothing to fear."

"What about our families? What will they think about us up and disappearing tonight?" Will asked, glancing to her mother with open concern.

"Your families will face memory conditioning. As far as they know, you are all at a boarding house outside of the city until the disaster is resolved. If your absence becomes protracted, something else will be arranged."

Will nodded, and then looked at each of her friends, at least, the visible ones. One by one, they gave her the okay, with Taranee passing along Hay Lin's silent agreement.

"Okay, we'll come quietly," Will said, and then turned to one side. She could just see a feline shape in the shadows under the bench where Cornelia had laid Lillian down to rest. "I just hope someone gets word to all of our friends about what's happened to us," she said, just a bit louder than she should have if she were talking to herself as she pretended. The feline shadow vanished, swallowed by the night.

When the girls had followed Tibor through a fold in space, and were well gone from the dimension of Earth, the magic holding all the bystanders unaware was released. Susan Vandom wandered around in a daze for a few minutes before spotting Lillian on the bench. Suddenly, the memory conditioning Tibor had left constructed a plausible story, and she picked up the pretty little child and shook her gently awake.

"Who?" Lillian asked, still mostly asleep.

"Hello, you don't know me, but I'm Will's mom. You know Will, Cornelia's friend?"

"Will is _my_ friend, too," the girl protested, and Ms. Vandom smiled at her.

"Of course, my mistake. Anyway, your dad got stuck in the bank during the earthquake, and he asked me to come check on you."

The fact that this story didn't make any sense was immaterial. Everyone involved was part of the memory conditioning, and it would make the story true for them.

"Cornelia got eaten by a tree," Lillian said, jerking a bit more awake. "I saw it."

"Oh, you were just having a nightmare. Cornelia is with Will and the other girls outside of town."

"Oh yeah," Lillian brightened immediately. "Napoleon was talking, so it must have been a dream. But… where is Napoleon?"

"Napoleon is a cat, yes?" Ms. Vandom calmed her new charge, "he'll be fine. Now let's just sit tight and wait for your dad to get home, okay?"

Lillian agreed, and the façade was complete. As far as Earth was concerned, Will, Irma, Taranee, Cornelia, and Hay Lin were safe and sound. Fortunately, Napoleon the cat, the one creature who knew differently, was hurrying to spread the word.

**Next Chapter: Guardians No More**


	2. Guardians No More

We're getting into zones where I re-wrote a bunch of content. If you spot some glaring inconsistency that seems to be an artifact of the rewrite, don't hesitate to point it out. I'm positive I can't have caught all of them.

**Dragon Sisters**

**Chapter 2: Guardians No More**

**Candracar, the Center of Infinity, Candracar Fortress Prison**

The last of W.I.T.C.H. filed into the roomy, white-walled cell and turned around just in time to see a purple force barrier materialize between them and Tibor. The robed man with his extravagant white beard gave them a solemn look as they were locked away, and received various unpleasant stares in return.

"The air guardian is in there too, I trust?" Tibor began, immune to their hostility.

"I'm here," Hay Lin spoke, sending a little twister of icy air around the closed cell.

"Admirably honest of you. Anyway, you will all remain here until the evidence and witness have been gathered for your tribunal hearing. Because of the gravity of this case, it has been rushed forward, and that time shall be unusually soon."

"You mean," Taranee cut in, "that you're rushing the case so there won't be time for our friends to come to our defense." She'd learned enough about legal processes from her mom to understand this tactic, and she spotted it here easily. That didn't make her any less terrified of the entire situation.

"That simply isn't true!" the elderly-looking being seemed genuinely upset by her implication. "Your trial shall be as fair as any ever judged. If you are indeed innocent, the evidence shall vindicate you. Until then, I advise you not to resist your captivity. Any trouble you cause will weigh heavily against your case."

Before anyone could say another word, he vanished down the hallway in a swirl of robe. The W.I.T.C.H. girls were left behind with differing expressions of despair, anger, and resignation. Although they had come willingly, they were not allowed to move through Candracar unrestrained, and their choices had been either guards and magical bonds, or a stay in these painfully bare cells. Privacy and comfort had won out over magical wrist cuffs and the dubious honor of walking the palatial halls of the Fortress at the Center of Infinity under constant observation. Of course, they might have thought twice if they'd realized the cell was so… 'cozy.'

"Watch it Taranee!" Cornelia shrieked as the girl got very hot suddenly, nearly lighting her long hair on fire.

"Sorry! I was just steamed up by the way they're treating us," The dark girl struggled with her heat as the others all backed away from her broiling aura.

Irma took one step too many, bumping the bench and sitting down hard as she lost her balance. Water burst spontaneously from her body, drenching her and the floor beneath her as though someone had dumped a cooler full of water over her head. While she winced through that experience, Will found her increasing difficulty in mitigating her electric charge was coming to a peek. Will's short hair was standing on end, her whole body buzzing with an electric charge that tingled along her skin and made her teeth rattle. The water from Irma crept up under her shoe and the charge suddenly dumped all at once, a blue spark singing along the wet trail leading to the brunette. Irma shouted at the sudden sting and hopped away, retreating into the cell's back wall and slapping against it with a wet gushing that burst water across the room all over again. Everyone was at least a little wet now, and they all moaned at the unpleasantness.

"This… _sucks_..." Cornelia complained, even as she staggered away from Irma, wiping the water out of her eyes. She found one of the two wall-mounted benches that were the wide cell's only furniture and settled onto it, glad beyond description that there were no plants around to grab at her. As soon as she thought that, she noticed a clod of dirt tracked into the unnaturally clean cell on their shoes happened to include a tuft of shamrocks, and she blanched when she saw the little green shoots quiver pathetically in their attempt to get closer to her.

"Tell me about it," Taranee agreed, sitting down on the other wall's bench. The air around her glowed softly orange and wavered with heat mirages, and she splashed some water from Irma's puddle onto herself to keep her borrowed clothes from igniting. Seconds after being moistened, they steamed.

"Everybody, just sit tight," Will said, wondering idly how she was supposed to safely discharge her electricity now that they were all standing in a puddle. "This situation is hardly as bad as it seems. We do have friends, and they're bound to find out about this and raise a fuss. With the Reagents of Earth and the Queen of Meridian on our side, along with at least half the council, including the Oracle, they'll have a hard time making this kangaroo-court job stick."

"That would be sooo much more comforting if I wasn't wallowing in the evidence of my own guilt," Irma quipped, trying to brush some of the water off of her arms without spraying anymore around. "Will, the fact is, we _did_ destroy Heatherfield. We have mitigating circumstances out the wazoo, but intentional or not… we still hurt people… we still leveled homes."

"Including some of _ours_," Hay Lin whispered, sending an icy gust of air around the room. A lot of the water frosted over, and Irma clutched her arms around her body against the biting wind.

"Telepathy, _please_, Hay Lin," Irma begged through clenched teeth as she scooted over toward Taranee and warmed up again. Between their two side-effects, they were making steam in no time, and the room was all-around warmer in moments.

"_Sorry_," came quickly into their minds, heavy with contrition.

"I hear what you're saying, Irma, and I have my own point to raise," Will got back on track once the distractions had settled. She pulled out the Heart of Candracar and dangled in on its chain. "We still have the heart."

"Are you suggesting that we guardian-up and trash this place if they try and stick us with charges because _their_ lousy powers screwed up on us?" Cornelia asked, sounding enthusiastic, "Because I would _totally_ be behind that plan."

"No… but we'll keep that option open," Will added, when she saw her friend's earnest expression. "What I'm trying to say is that they _didn't_ take it away. If they were serious about holding us, they would have, but here we are, still able to transform into guardians… in theory."

"Yeah… so what's your point?" Taranee asked, interested. It was clear to all of them that Will had some serious things on her mind.

"I don't know if we will be transforming for a while…" Will admitted to them all what she'd already told Irma, "I tried to earlier and got the sense that it would be a _Very Bad Idea_. Exactly why, I don't know, but these senses of mine usually aren't wrong."

The girls nodded at this. Will had shown unbelievable instincts, especially when it came to the Heart and all of its many hidden powers.

"Anyway, I figure the fact that they didn't take the Heart can only mean that they _can't_ take it." Will smiled, because her point was finally starting to dawn on some of her friends.

"_You mean this is like the Heart of Meridian and the Heart of Earth_?" Hay Lin observed. "_It can't be used by someone who takes it by force as long as we're worthy of its powers_!"

"Exactly!" Will nodded, slipping the Heart back around her neck and leaving it in view. "I figure very little will count more in our favor than the fact that the Heart still considers us worthy. As long as we control it, they'll have to be careful about how they treat us."

"An excellent observation," spoke a familiar voice from behind the magical shield, startling all of them, "But I'd caution you against relying on that. Nerissa thought that same fact would protect _her_. People worthy to use the Heart of Candracar are not nearly so rare as those worthy of other Hearts."

All of the girls turned toward the voice at the same time, and standing there was the youthful, handsome Oracle, shaved head and all. He smiled at their shock, the easy expression so at odds with the situation that the guardians couldn't help but feel better in spite of themselves.

"Oracle!" Will stepped forward as spokeswoman, "what on Earth are you doing here?"

"Oh please girls, don't sound so surprised!" he answered, pretending indignation as he smiled their concerns away, "you five are some of the best guardians I've ever chosen. If you think I'm going to simply stand by and let you face the full force of Candracar's ancient disciplinary process alone, then I really haven't given you the right impression of me."

"Well, there's some of the first good news I've heard all night!" Irma said, perking up from her damp depression. "So how about you work your Oracle voodoo and spring us out of the slammer? I could _really_ use a towel… or ten."

"I'm afraid my authority is not so great as that," the Oracle admitted sheepishly, his smile becoming strained as their faces fell in unison. "But I will put my full support behind you for the trial and make certain that you are not 'railroaded' by our less… grateful factions. There are those in Candracar who would ignore your many services and happily condemn you, simply because you were not _their_ choices for the next generation of guardians in the first place. I fear they have leapt at this opportunity to censure you and are pushing strongly for the heaviest punishment we have."

"Oh GREAT!" Taranee moaned, "We have enemies in high places who we don't even _know_," an unintentional jet of flame flew from her hands as she made empathetic gestures for her rant, "and they're angry at us for something we didn't even have a _choice_ about!"

"_Watch the fire_!" Hay Lin shouted in their minds as a gust of wind blew the curling lick of flame aside.

"So mister big-shot," Cornelia stood up and took a position at Will's shoulder to eye their benefactor skeptically, "If you can't just wave your hands and make this nightmare go away, what can you do for us—and I mean _right_ _now_. An explanation is nice and all, but we're experiencing some serious problems here!"

"I had noticed," The Oracle looked over her shoulder and spotted a clump of green wiggling across the damp floor to follow her. "And I must say that I haven't the slightest idea what's happening to you. Guardian powers shouldn't be able to go out of control—the aurameres are quite good at that. You may not have enough knowledge to use all your powers intentionally, but your powers will never do anything you don't will them to, at least subconsciously. Accidents can sometimes happen, but this scale is like nothing I've seen in all my years."

"Beautiful!" Cornelia stalked away, face tight with distress, "not even the ancient being of ultimate wisdom has a clue what's gone funky with our powers!"

"Ah, now, don't give up on me yet!" The Oracle lifted one arm and reached into his sleeve, "I come baring gifts! For Ms. Cook," he pulled from his open sleeve a set of glasses and passed them through the magic wall inside of a purple bubble that went through it like it wasn't there.

"You'll find these are your prescription and quite totally heat-resistant. The only way to destroy those would be to toss them into a sun. Which, I fear, I must beg you not to do. The energy reaction would be quite catastrophic." Will carried the glasses over to Taranee, who lifted them gingerly in her fingers and opened them up.

"Right, no suns, got it!" she said, slipping them on. They were identical to the ones she'd melted to slag earlier that night. "Hah! I can see again!"

"If only I could provide clothing of the same quality," he lamented, "but even my resources are limited. Now, for the young Ms. Lin, a ring!" The Oracle produced a plain gold band from his sleeve and handed that in through another bubble. "This is enchanted with an illusion counter-spell. It's a device used to keep illusion wizards from casting glamour magic, including invisibility. Several people have commented that a ring which makes people visible is an ironic item. I don't really get it." Will held the ring out and they watched as it soon floated in thin air. Nothing happened.

"_Um, guys._" Hay Lin explained the delay, "_I'm not really sure how much clothing I was wearing when I crawled out of the tornado zone last night, already invisible. I mean, I feel like I'm wearing _something_, but…_"

"Ladies," Cornelia took charge, "form up!" In moments, she, Irma, and Will stood shoulder to shoulder, a human privacy screen, with Taranee a bit too meat-cooking hot to add her body to the wall. Behind them, Hay Link tried on the ring.

"_Well, nevermind! I'm still see-through_!" Hay Lin complained, looking through her arm with a crooked frown. She was standing in the middle of the cell, and Cornelia could see Taranee right through her chest. As for the mystery of how much clothing she'd held on to while invisible, it was still a mystery. Below her neck, one couldn't make out more than a vague outline of where her body was, much less any detail.

"Well," The Oracle frowned too, unable to hear her thoughts unless Taranee willed it, "It would seem the ring's magic is not equal to your auramere powers, but you must admit this is an improvement. In any case, my time here grows short. For the intrepid Ms. Vandom, one last gift. You have been experiencing involuntary quintessence discharge, I gather?"

"What was your first clue?" Will asked, dripping with sarcasm. Her hair was starting to stand on end again, and her loose, spaghetti-strap shirt was clinging to her flat, immature figure like socks to the side of the dryer.

"Well, we can't have you accidentally shocking people—that would be terrible for your case. So I give you this," he produced a small ball, a clear marble the size of a glass eye, and handed it to her through the wall. "It is a powerstone that will accept your magical energy, not unlike a battery. Its capacity is vast, so I doubt you will fill it before the situation has been resolved one way or the other."

"Thank you, for everything," Will said, genuinely grateful to the mysterious, strangely powerful being who was treating them so casually. "But… I have to ask… what are the ways this might be resolved? What are we facing here?"

"Ah…" The Oracle hesitated, but only for a moment. "Understand that I believe you when you say you didn't cause all that damage on purpose," he began, "No one who has seen you fight so fiercely and unselfishly to protect others would imagine you capable of such a thing. Unfortunately, to a powerful faction of Candracar's councilmen, the fact that you were unable to control your powers is just as bad as if you went around using them to knock over worlds like Nerissa tried to do."

"They will demand that you be removed as guardians, severed from the aurameres, and relieved of the Heart, which shall wait in storage for new worthies to claim it. According to the new doctrine, you will be sent home and forced to forget that you were ever guardians, so that you may not come back bearing a grudge as Nerissa did. There will be the usual hot-heads calling for eternal imprisonment, but you have nothing to fear there. I and your friends can definitely protect you from that much."

The Oracle let that sink in, and each girl met with the idea of becoming powerless in her own way. Doubtless, magical abilities had their high and low points, the lowest of the low being the varying degrees of inconvenience they all faced now. They'd had unforgettable experiences, both wonderful and terrifying, in their service as guardians. Eventually, to the last girl, they realized that they didn't want to let that go.

"You might also be acquitted entirely, no strings attached," The Oracle tried and mostly failed to lighten the mood, "although I would not hold out for that eventuality. Either way, you will not be released to complete freedom again until we understand exactly what has happened to you to cause all this. I have contacted the most brilliant thaumaturgist in all the cosmos already, and he has promised to study this phenomenon. As an unequaled genius and a descendent of the people who created the aurameres, all those millennia ago, he stands a good chance of understanding what we do not."

"_So, this thaum-guy is going to know how to cure us_?" Hay Lin commented, and Taranee relayed it to The Oracle.

"I'm sorry to say, I suspect you will be 'cured' when the council votes to sever you from the aurameres," The Oracle didn't mince words, and the girls all stood in shock at the frankness of his response. "Professor Starder will hopefully discover how to keep it from happening again so that you may once again serve as guardians without endangering those around you."

"So we're really going to be… fired?" Taranee asked, and none of them liked the way that sounded. "Even though we didn't have control when we destroyed Heatherfield… or _because_ we didn't?"

"I fear so. But still… I am the 'The Oracle'… but I've been wrong before. Let us hope this is one of those times." He didn't sound hopeful, and that left the girls equally without hope as he walked away.

"_Well… that was a whole new level of depressing_," Hay Lin thought-mumbled, walking feather-light over to sit next to Cornelia.

"Yeah, but at least everything seems to be under control," Taranee was finally starting to calm down now that she understood the situation better. "If all that will happen is a mandatory vacation from serving as guardians, than this really isn't so bad. Sure, it wasn't our fault, but we _do_ need to fix… this. Maybe this is the best way."

"I'm more worried about 'You will not be released until we understand exactly what happened to you,'" Cornelia said, sounding more grave than usual. "Doesn't it bother anyone else here that they haven't got a clue? We've seen what these powers can do, how can we be calm as long as something is going on that no one understands? What if we're sick? What if were _dyi_—"

"That's enough, Cornelia," Will cut her off, seeing the looks of fear rising on Taranee and Hay Lin's faces. "It doesn't do us any good to guess about this stuff. We don't seem to be changing anymore right now, let's just leave this to the magic professionals."

"Because they've been doing _such_ a stellar job so far," Irma joked, but retreated immediately from Will's dirty look.

"I don't know guys," Taranee said, scratching her nose as she considered the situation, "This professor guy sounds serious—like the kind of guy you call when you know you don't understand what you're dealing with. If he's really the best around, then he's obviously also our best shot. I suppose we just have to sit tight and wait for our…" she swallowed hard, "conviction."

"Oh Joy." Cornelia summed up the mood with two words. The room fell into a strained silence, and Will let it stay there this time. A little moping might do them some good after a night like this one. For her part, she took a seat next to Hay Lin and stared at her powerstone. As she began to force her electrical energy into it, a tiny pink spark appeared and started to flicker and leap in its crystal-clear depths.

The five of them stewed in their cell for something like a few hours. The light in the hallway outside never changed, but Will's body told her it was dawn with a feeling like cotton stuffed between her ears. The entire situation was made worse as they endured their various magical side-effects, which in turn were made worse by their exhaustion.

Taranee finally succumbed to sleep, the other girls hardly able to begrudge her the rest after her traumatic experience. Of course, she began to heat up immediately, and the only way to keep it from becoming dangerous was to have Hay Lin circulate the air like a human heat pump, sucking cool air in from the ventilation shaft on the ceiling and pushing the hot air out again.

This led to Irma freezing her butt off, unable to get dry, and Will and Cornelia crowded in beside her to try and warm her up, getting drenched in the process. In other words, it was a dreary time, and Irma woke Taranee with a blast of water that exploded into steam, warming them all up again and freeing Hay Lin and the others to take a turn sleeping. Will elected to stay awake and keep Taranee company, but the truth was she wanted to keep an eye on her friends. She felt responsible, and Taranee could read it right out of her mind, even if she could hide it from the others.

"_This isn't your fault, Will_," Taranee sent to her mind only, when the others had settled down to sleep. Irma was dribbling a constant stream of water off her bench and onto the floor, leaving Hay Lin and Cornelia to compete for space on the other, dry bench. Now that the floor had a solid coat of water on it, Taranee and Will elected to stand rather than get further drenched. "_No one could have seen this coming. We were all caught off guard_."

"_Yeah…_" Will sounded unconvinced as she wallowed in guilt. "_But I'm supposed to be the leader, right? That makes me responsible for all of this, ultimately."_

"_Be realistic, Will! How could this possibly have anything to do with you_?" Taranee sounded very reasonable, but that didn't impress Will's staggering sense of responsibility.

"_I know it doesn't make sense_," Will told her, "_But I just get the feeling that if I had somehow been a better leader, done things differently, that maybe we wouldn't be going through this now. Maybe I had something to do with our powers go funky, probably I didn't. Probably there's nothing I could have done any better, and this is all cruel fate. That doesn't make me feel much better._"

"_Oh, you're just depressed. And…_" Taranee trailed off for a second, concentrating, then smiled. "_Well, this should cheer you up. We have visitors coming_. _Heh, I think I might miss being able to hear thoughts_."

"Visitors?" Will said out loud, looking toward the purple force-wall. Moments later, a crowd of people came into view. The three massive members of the group almost crowded out the other two, but they were all a welcome sight. "Matt—everyone!" Will whispered, ecstatic to see friendly faces.

"Will!" Matt in the guise of Shagon shouted in relief to see her, his eyes flashing behind the bronze mask framed by his dark curls. His huge wings flapped in excitement, and the noise was something else. He was immediately shushed by an angry little red-head.

"Everyone's sleeping, keep your voices down!" Will ordered. Caleb smirked and Elyon giggled, while the other two Reagents of Earth in their massive battle forms stood aside and watched the huge Shagon cringe away from a pubescent girl. "Sorry…" Will apologized for snapping, "We've been under a lot of stress, what with our powers funking up. It's sooo good to see some friendly faces in here."

"Well, we certainly weren't going to leave you guys stranded in the slammer!" Elyon assured her, "Not after everything you've done for us."

"Yeah, we practically had to hold Matt here in an arm-lock to keep him from single-handedly assaulting the fortress at the center of infinity and busting you out." Caleb elbowed the huge angel in the ribs and gave Will a conspiratorial smile, even as he glanced past her to where Cornelia was resting with Hay Lin. Some great weight lifted from his shoulders as he saw her whole and healthy.

"Will… I was so worried about you," Shagon said, and quickly reverted to plain old Matt. Now he stood only one foot taller than her instead of a towering four feet, and he was able to place his hand against the magical barrier low enough for her to raise hers to meet it. "I promise we'll do everything we can to get you out of here."

"We've only got a little time before they come to take you to your trial," Elyon interrupted their moment, bringing up the urgent matter at hand. "We should wake the others and go over the story you'll be presenting to the council. I don't exactly understand the proceeding, but I figure we'll be character witnesses at best. You guys are really going to have to impress them with your own side of the story."

"Right," Will stepped back from the wall and got her team together. Everyone was happy to see their friends, although Irma begged for more sleep and Cornelia was aghast at being seen with her hair uncombed and wearing the ratty old clothes she'd scrambled up in the dark during an earthquake. The lot of them spent a good ten minutes going over their stories, at which point Tibor showed up again to escort them to the room where they would be judged.

**Candracar, Main Council Chamber**

The large chamber where the full Council of Candracar would meet was nothing less than an indoor garden. A shallow reflecting pool full of lilies surrounded a central island, while the entire circumference of the room was taken up by short stadium seating carved from the pure white stone of everything else in this place. The seating had scattered pillows for kneeling and sitting, and was completely vacant when the girls were led in. Out in the shallow pool were five glowing teardrop-shaped jewels the size of pumpkins floating on extra-large lilies, and each one contained an elemental crest and glowed with its color.

"Swanky," Irma whispered, not bothering with telepathy. It had been explained in no uncertain terms that trying to talk secretly would reflect poorly on them. Tibor had spoken nearly non-stop on the long walk over here, drilling them on courtroom etiquette and their rights in a legal crash-course that he apologized for again and again. Usually there was time enough to coach defendants, but the special case of their trial was again proving problematic. If it hadn't been for Napoleon's quick work, their friends would never have made it in time.

"I'd agree… but I'm not really in the right frame of mind to appreciate the architecture." Will was wringing her hands, passing the powerstone from one palm to the other to keep her power from rising to a dangerous level. The girls were now standing in a circle that put them at the edge of the seating closest to the main doors, probably the 'front' of the circular room. It was a position designed to intimidate, and it was doing a fair job of it.

"Yeah, well, I just wish I had a chance to change!" Cornelia said, "I'd feel ten times more confident if I could just dress for the occasion here!" She brushed at the tight material of her pink shirt and muttered foul things. The holdover from her childhood was way too small and made her look like she was trying to show off her nearly non-existent chest—not at all the look she wanted while in court.

"That's our Corny, always thinking about clothes," Irma tried to break the mood with a little levity, and got a whole row of dirty looks for her trouble. No one was in the mood right now, and she huffed to silence.

"Guys, quiet, I think it's starting," Taranee shushed them, and they fell silent. At first there was no motion, but then everything began to happen at once.

In the center of the room, on that tiny island, the Oracle appeared in all of his congenial, ever-serene anti-climax. He waved at them pleasantly as all around the room, space folds began to open. In seconds, dozens of humanoid beings of every imaginable description had filled the room's seating to capacity, although each council member did have a fairly large space to his or herself for propriety's sake. The councilmen and women had no unifying characteristic beyond their identical robes, a true sampling of all the entities that inhabited the nearly infinite words of the cosmos.

"I suddenly wish I was invisible again," Hay Lin whispered as softly as she could manage, using her power to project it and tickling Will's ear with an icy gust as it floated to her. Will nodded, and gave Cornelia a pointed look, prompting the tall girl to move around and close Hay Lin into the middle of their group. They couldn't do much, but they could keep the most intimidated of their numbers tucked away.

"This congregation of the Council of Candracar will come to order!" Shouted Tibor, coming up from behind the girls to sand next to them and direct the proceedings. He rattled through a whole list of formalities in a perfect oratory voice, and of all things, the girls soon found themselves more bored than scared. Considering how scared they were, it was an impressive achievement. "… and so let the proceedings begin! The prosecution shall be lead by Councilman Estren of Calbian."

A tall being with purple scaled skin and golden horns stood up from his seat and moved to stand next to Tibor. He eyed the guardians coldly and a slight smirk played across his blue lips. It was impossible for the girls to not hate him instantly, and he seemed to appreciate their dirty looks.

"The defense shall be lead by Councilwoman Halinor," Tibor announced, and all five girls turned as one with burgeoning smiles as the older woman stepped up from her seat and advanced to stand beside them opposite from Estren. Halinor gave them a extravagant wink, the tall, beautiful blond radiating confidence, and suddenly things didn't seem nearly as overpowering. Tibor then stepped away and floated across the water to take up a position next to The Oracle, allowing the trial to get underway.

"My fellow council members," Estren began, apparently allowed the first opening statement, "These guardians stand before you accused of the ultimate transgression a guardian can commit—misusing the powers granted to them by the grace of ourselves and the wise Oracle. In short, they've bent our gift to the purposes of mayhem and destruction rather than preservation and balance. The defense will attempt to appeal to your pity for these 'children' and site their past services as though they can forgive this unwarranted and unparalleled attack on their defenseless fellow humans. The truth is that these guardians have shown themselves to be a menace as dangerous as any rouge guardian ever mistakenly granted the pure power of the elements! Allowing human _children_ the power of the aurameres again, not even fifty years after the betrayal of Nerissa, was a mistake—exactly as I explained when the decision was made!"

"Order!" Tibor shouted, and his voice boomed across the courtroom. "Estren, your past grievances have no bearing on this hearing. We are all well aware of your position on the matter, you are hereby ordered to stick to the facts of the case!"

"Of course," the Councilman bowed, hiding his smirk, "I apologize."

"If my associate is done preaching his political platform, I'll make my statement," Halinor said, every word carrying a tone of confident energy reserved to natural born elitists. A chuckle went around the room, that small joke apparently quite witty in a crowd of celestial bureaucrats, and Halinor was reprimanded by Tibor in turn as Estren's scaled cheeks flushed blue with anger.

"Although Estren would like nothing more than for the guardian positions to open again so he might once more push for his _daughter's_ appointment," Halinor sniped, getting an angry look from Tibor and Estren both, although for different reasons, "his argument is still valid. No one is trying to deny that the power of the aurameres disrupted the lives of innocent people, dealing both crushing property damage and even some dire injuries. These guardians, to whom we owe the end of the veil siege and the salvation of untold worlds from the shadow of Nerissa's madness, make no claim that this is not true. However, the _whole_ truth is that they are every bit as much victims as any other humans to suffer in Heatherfield, if not far, far more. Even as we stand here deliberating their fate, these girls, not one even fifteen Earth-years old yet, are suffering from new and inexplicable magical side-affects that can only be attributed to the powers we thrust upon them. They don't need to be judged, they need help, and I for one am ashamed of this entire farce of a trial!"

"Ah—she openly admits that they are no longer capable of controlling their powers!" Estren cut in immediately, beginning a process of argument and counter-argument that would last the better part of an hour. At last, each girl in turn was called forward to give her personal account of the night, and not one of them messed up in any material way, even though Taranee was petrified with nerves and Hay Lin had to give her statement from inside a shield to keep from accidentally freezing the council chamber. By the end of it, it seemed that everyone was aware that the girls were facing something strange and unexpected that was still affecting them, but equally aware that their powers were not fully controlled anymore. That left the room floating on a bubble of uncertainty that could still go either way.

The time came for the two sides to call witnesses. No one was contesting the actual events of the night, merely the intent behind them, so Estren really couldn't do much here. There was no one in the cosmos who would honestly say that the guardians could commit a vicious attack on defenseless people, at least none that weren't behind bars, and so he stood back with a frown as first Elyon, then Yan Lin, and finally all of the Reagents at once stepped up beside Halinor to sing the guardians' praises. If nothing else, the council was impressed with how much the girls had achieved, and how much they were owed.

"Tonight, you have heard much of these girls' nobility," Estren began his closing statement some three hours after the trial had first begun, "and equally as much of their achievements. Perhaps they did not intentionally cause this destruction, but they do not deny that their powers are now operating in dangerous and unpredictable ways. The pure forces of the five elements simply cannot be left in such an unstable situation. These girls must be expunged from guardian status, or the next time this instability could lead to far greater destruction. Do not forget the fate of Tert and Pleew—untamed elemental force can and will consume entire worlds!"

"The defense rests," Halinor said, causing anxiety in the girls and a whisper around the room, "citing the fact that the prosecution has freely admitted its inability to prove the original charges. I motion that the charges be dismissed."

"I hear this motion," Tibor answered as the Oracle smiled on, "who would second it?" About one third of the council members present rushed to second the motion that would let the girls off completely free. Will and the others felt a rising tide of hope as they watched it happen. "Motion moved and seconded. Vote now."

Every council member closed his or her eyes, and the vote was tallied in seconds through telepathic consensus. Taranee could hear the process going on, and knew the results seconds before Tibor announced them. Unable to contain her relief, she squealed and hugged Irma and Will, creating a burst of steam and a quiet hiss of pain. Will wrestled herself free before she was burned as Tibor verbally announced their acquittal.

"Very well," Estren shrugged aside his defeat, "I feel that much new information has come to light in this proceeding. I lieu of this, for the safety of the infinite worlds, I motion that the current guardians be compelled surrender their powers indefinitely, or until such a time as these problems are understood completely. Surely such noble children would not begrudge such a prudent safety measure? I imagine being freed from their burdensomely malfunctioning powers would be a welcome circumstance."

The girls felt their victory rush die immediately, and Hay Lin actually whimpered. Halinor was frowning, and even The Oracle's ever-present smile seemed somewhat less enthusiastic as he was proven correct on a subject where he'd wished to be wrong, for once. The motion was openly seconded by a quarter of the room, and the secret voting passed it by a narrow margin, sending Taranee into a shocked daze ahead of the news.

"The vote is tallied…" Tibor said, looking solemn and upset, "the guardians will be severed from the aurameres during the course of an investigation into this malfunction. If the situation cannot be rectified before a new crisis arises, new guardians will be selected to take their places. The ruling is to be carried out…" Tibor looked shocked as this portion of the Estren's motion finally dawned on him, "_immediately_."

"No," The Oracle said, the first word to escape his mouth so far. A gasp went up around the room, and the former guardians, all too stunned to even react properly, suddenly felt their dwindling hope re-lit.

"No?" Estren objected violently, "with all due respect your eminence, the motion has passed! The council has decided what is best, and this time you cannot go over our heads as you did when you appointed them without popular approval!"

"I have no such intent," The Oracle was quick to assuage everyone's fears, "But I must object to this unnecessary rush. Their powers should not be revoked until my chosen expert is here to monitor the process. This is still unknown ground we tread upon—we must not be too hasty to proceed when we know not the consequences."

"Irrelevant!" Estren was very blue under his scales now, "removing their connection to the aurameres is the obvious solution to this entire situation! There can be no excuse for delaying an end to the threat they represent! I don't know how, but those little girls have corrupted our sacred tools, and it is the grossest of irresponsibility to allow them access for a moment longer!"

"You should trust me on this issue," The Oracle pleaded neutrally, the utter lack of cheer in his voice the ultimate sign of his fury. "I am bound by our laws to obey the council's rulings, but it is my _responsibility_ to advise you. My advice is to _wait_."

"Enough!" Estren snapped, "you've pampered these children from the start! Their achievements will seem as nothing compared to what our choices might accomplish! Beyond all that, they have injured the aurameres by their mere existence, proving their insufficiency beyond doubt. They are done, _now_!"

"Estren, you need to calm down and listen to The Oracle!" Halinor shouted. The argument had reached a peak, and the chamber was filled to the brim with excited conversation among the remaining council members. The girls stood in their little circle and watched their fates argued among ancient beings as though they weren't even present, too awed to weigh in themselves.

"No, I'm through listening. Aurameres! Hear me!" Estren shouted, "I speak with the voice of the council's ruling! You are now required to _sever_ your connection to the current guardians!"

"This… this is _bad_," Taranee told them as the five glowing teardrops floating on the pond suddenly became much, much brighter. As representations of the aurameres where they sat orbiting in their guarded chamber, the teardrops spoke of the activity going on out of sight.

"_This is way worse than bad_," Hay Lin spoke to their minds, beyond caring about the rules of the council chamber. She was clinging to Cornelia and shivering, Taranee wishing she could do the same but cautious of her heat. The bigger girls did their meager best to shield them, but they were all just frightened children at this moment. Will actually drew up the Heart of Candracar one last time to attempt to unite them, and one last time was repelled in terror from speaking the words. Whatever their approaching fate was, they would not be saved from it.

With surprising anti-climax, the glowing tears on the pond died down again, and when nothing immediately blew up or went all magical-crazy on them, the girls realized that they were the only ones who had been particularly nervous. Despite all the drama that had been drummed up, granting and removing the auramere's blessing was well-known to be a perfectly uninteresting process by everyone there but them.

"Is… is that it?" Irma asked, noticing that she was still letting out a slow gush of water.

"It can't be—I'm still transparent," Hay Lin observed, looking through her arms.

"I'm still a telepathic human space-heater," Taranee chimed in, "so I guess… it didn't work?"

"Hah!" Cornelia shouted, pointing over at a satisfied-looking Estren in taunting victory, "it looks like the aurameres know better than to listen to a horn-headed jerk like you, _huh_ purple boy?"

"How is this possible?" Estren had one brow raised, "I felt the aurameres respond myself! How are you still empowered?"

"Maybe you're just _wrong_!" Cornelia shouted again, "maybe you're magic is as lousy as your attitude!"

"Cornelia, stop taunting the alien entity of wisdom," Will grabbed her arm and pulled it down. "We should try to figure out what—"

Will suddenly made a choking sound and fell to her knees, clutching at her heart. Her eyes and mouth were emitting pink light like someone had thrust a lamp inside her head, and she heaved with seizure force as she collapsed.

"EEEEE!" Hay Lin screamed at the sight, a blast of winter wind turning the pond into an ice rink and drawing everyone's attention to the fallen girl.

"Oh my _GOD_! _WILL_!" Taranee knelt down by her friend with panic on her face, hesitant to touch her but almost too worried to care. "What is this?"

"Please, somebody help her—" Irma begged anyone who would listen, but was met with astonished stares. Apparently whatever was happening was so strange that the audience was stunned.

"This—this isn't happening—" Cornelia's eyes were wide in horror, "what—" she was cut off as she gagged and fainted, eyes and mouth blazing green with light. None of the others had time to react to that before they were each claimed in turn, red light claiming Taranee, turquoise consuming Irma, and light blue felling Hay Lin.

"What's going on in here?" Shagon shouted, bursting back into the room behind a grim-faced Elyon, who'd nearly blown the doors right off their hinges to speed their entry. "I heard screaming—what's the meaning of this? I demand—WILL!" Shagon noticed the limp, magically-afflicted shape lying inanimate on the floor and lost all reason. "MONSTERS! What have you done to her?"

"Cornelia!" Elyon shrieked, and was transported across the room in a puff of smoke to instantly stand beside her friend.

"_Fiends_!" Shagon bellowed again, "This will not stand!" His fury-brightened eyes traced across the room to find the staggered, flabbergasted Estren slowly backing away from the former guardians. "_You_!"

Estren instantly turned and leapt through his personal fold to escape, Shagon hot on his heels but missing narrowly as the fold vanished. Robbed of his target, he redirected to the frowning, but otherwise serene Oracle. In two flaps he was standing beside the elder entity, huge and menacing. Tibor stood to interpose himself nervously but was shifted aside by The Oracle before he could.  
"We trusted you to protect them!" Shagon moaned, more distraught than angry now, "What's going on?"

"It is exactly as I feared," The Oracle said, and nothing more as he rubbed as his chin in consideration.

"What? What's happening to them?" Shagon demanded.

"I haven't a clue," The Oracle shrugged, "and that's what I was afraid of. All I know is that their life energies are fading… fading _quickly_."

Just then, there were more flashes from the still bodies lying across the room, and now their respective colors enveloped their whole bodies, rendering them into smooth, naked statues of pure energy. As though attracted by one another, their bodies were drawn into the air and formed a circle. They began to orbit slowly as the council and guests looked on in shock and fear.

"That… that isn't good…" The Oracle said, sounding mildly perturbed. His unwavering calm infuriated Matt, and Shagon's rippling muscles strained and creaked with his impotent rage. The urge to do something to save Will and the others was overpowering, but all of that energy had nowhere to go. He was clueless, and that made him helpless.

"There _must_ be something we can do!" he prompted The Oracle to make with the semi-cosmic magic, and this time the insanely calm and collected being snapped his fingers in revelation.

"Of course!" He said, "I can't do anything. No one here can," The Oracle proclaimed cheerily, making Matt choke on screams of frustration, "in fact, there's only one entity in the universe that I can imagine would _definitely_ be able to help. One man I trust to do the job correctly, anyway. I already requested his presence, but he said he would be late due to other engagements. I'm sure that with this newly urgent situation, we could persuade him to arrive ahead of schedule and intercede to save their lives."

"YES!" Shagon bellowed in relief, "Send me to… _inform_ him. I'll make _certain_ that he arrives in time to save Wil—er everyone!"

"I think that's a wonderful plan!" The Oracle agreed with a glowing smile, "This is Professor Gen Starder," Shagon's mind was suddenly filled with an image of a surprisingly young man with short brown hair, handsome features, and a complex tribal tattoo decorating half his face. "He'll be within twenty feet of this fold," a fold opened behind The Oracle, showing some dreary city on an unnamed world. "Do hurry—I estimate less than ten minutes before the guardians are irreversibly consumed by this phenomenon."

Matt didn't waste time or breath to respond, he got to work.

The world on the other side of the portal was a city cast in a pall of night. It was easily as technological as Earth, evidenced by lampposts illuminating the empty streets, but Matt as Shagon had no time to admire it. He turned one full circle, looking for anyone at all, and stirred only when he heard voices from a nearby alley. Unconcerned with being seen in his angelic form, he stomped over in that direction.

"Professor Starder!" He shouted, and watched for a reaction. One of the several men crowded into the alley looked up by reflex, and Matt knew he had his man. "Professor, you're coming with me!"

"Who's your big friend, Gen?" asked one of the other men in the alley with an audible sneer. His features were hidden in the darkness, but Matt felt an instant wariness for him. Sometimes, you could just _sense_ a vile person. "Come to watch your back, has he? You know there will be consequences for trying to wiggle out of our 'agreement.' You aren't trying to cross us, are you?"

"I've never seen this joker before!" the unusually young genius assured them as he tried to edge out of the corner they'd backed him into. "I'm a pretty famous guy, I cured all those magical diseases, you know? Maybe this guy's sister has first stage Bane? Winged species are prone to that one."

"Is that true metal face?" the vile man stepped closer, coming under the glow of Shagon's eyes. He had patches of different colored skin framing a weasel nose and a buzzed-short hairstyle. "Because you're just gonna have to get in line. We've already explained to big-brain here that he's going to be exclusively booked by the Warlord. He's not going anywhere until our boss is cured."

"This is a life and death emergency, you can sort this out after he's saved my friends," Shagon enunciated clearly and immediately tried to brush past him, only to get a punch in the guts. The punch had magical force behind it, and would have smashed ribs if he'd been empowered by anything less than the Heart of a planet. As it was, it kind of tickled.

"Bad move," Shagon's voice droned, and Matt quickly speared all three enforcers with energy blasts from his eyes strong enough to crush them into unconsciousness. The professor adjusted his glasses and let out an expansive sigh.

"So I guess you're here to drag me away for mandatory medical service to some other totalitarian power-monger who's run afoul of the wide world of wasting curses?" His clear, energetic voice sounded resigned and depressed. "I don't really care—just make it quick. I have _real_ work to do at the center of infinity."

"The Oracle sent me," Matt said, lifting the man by his arms and tossing him over his shoulder, the man too stunned to protest much, "The situation is critical. My friends might die in minutes if you can't save them!"

"The Oracle? You mean the guardians are in danger? Why didn't you say that in the first place!" the young professor shouted with difficulty from his new perch on the giant's back, "I'd have shed those thugs myself!"

"Just be ready!" Matt turned the corner from the alley and jumped right back into the fold he'd left a minute ago. They were back in the council chamber, where things had not progressed at all in the past minute.

The vast majority of the council was standing around stunned, looking aghast at the brilliant demise of five children who'd done nothing but serve faithfully in the job they'd been conscripted into. Elyon was weeping into Caleb's chest, and Yan Lin looked like she might die where she stood, her face so creased with pain and age that she was nearly unrecognizable. Napoleon in his gigantic form was helping her to stand, while Matt's pet dormouse in his gigantic form stared around, looking lost without his master. Matt set the one whom their hopes now rode upon down next to the smiling Oracle and started to pray.  
"You'd better be as good as they say," Shagon's deep voice warned, but the Professor only had eyes for the five glowing bodies orbiting in a loose ring over the reflecting ice of the shallow pool.

"Very interesting," he said, a strange look in his brown eyes as he walked closer. "They're trapped in a transformation matrix. Their spirits are trying to produce a more appropriate body form, but it's _undirected_. Their life force is winnowing away under the strain of stopping in mid-metamorphosis."

"Great, can you _fix_ it?" Matt asked urgently, not having actually heard nor cared for his jargon-filled analysis. He felt like his own life was ticking away to oblivion as Will's did.

"Well, I certainly can't _reverse_ it," the academic and doctor admitted as he frowned, "it'd be like trying to turn a butterfly back into a caterpillar—_without_ magic. What I really need is time to work on the problem."

Without saying anything more, he began to wave his arms in complex patterns. The shirt and slacks he was wearing billowed under the force of an unseen wind as he opened his mouth. Instead of emitting words, he spoke in pictures, complex runes rising from his lips like expanding smoke rings and traveling over to circle around the girls' glowing formation. He completed the spell, and suddenly the girls vanished, replaced by five two-inch-wide marbles, each one glowing with a specific color and symbol.

A collective gasp went up around the room, and no one was particularly sure what had just happened. The spheres floated over to Prof. Starder and began to orbit in front of him, and Matt was the first one to recover from his shock enough to be afraid.

"What did you do to them?" He asked, sounding terrified. His girlfriend had just been transformed into jewelry. Elyon, Caleb, and the others rushed up in time to hear the explanation, confusion all over their faces.

"In a transformation matrix, your body exists as pure energy. I collected all that energy and contained it in powerstones, where it won't be bled away by entropy," Starder said, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. "They're in no danger of dying now, and they won't come out of my treatments prematurely aged due to energy seepage."

"What?" asked Caleb, catching none of that.

"He said he's saved the guardians lives, and ensured that they won't look old enough to be your mother when he fixes them," The Oracle translated. "Well done Gen, truly superb. I knew you could come up with something to stabilize the situation."

"Don't give me that, Oracle," Starder snapped, focusing his attention on the glowing spheres, "You could have done this as easily as I did. You just wanted me to see the spectacular extent of the problem and save their lives so I'd get attached and work the project through to the end."

"Gen!" The Oracle feigned outrage, "that is a terrible accusation!"

"Well… it worked," Starder ignored his protests of innocence, "This is definitely the most interesting case I've seen in a good, long time. Do you realize that these girls are channeling elemental energy?" he seemed to change the subject with a random question.

"I was aware of it, yes," The Oracle admitted, "but the fact that such a thing is impossible was giving me a hard time. Their connection to the elements should have ceased the moment they were severed from the aurameres."

"Could you two please slow down and explain this to us!" Elyon demanded, "We just saw our friends almost die, and then get transformed into little aurameres!"

"Stellar observation, young woman!" Prof. Starder said, giving Elyon a smile for something she'd said in a flippant huff. "Very much like aurameres indeed! The aurameres were created by my ancestors a prodigiously long time ago, designed to channel elemental energy from the 'four dragons' and the 'nymph,' and then turn it into a force that could be harnessed by material beings such as you or I."

"Is anyone else understanding this?" Caleb asked, so confused now that he'd nearly forgotten his panic.

"Let's do a mental exercise shall we?" the Professor overrode their concern as his eyes danced with excitement. "These girls are channeling elemental energy, a feat supposedly impossible without the aid of a tool such as an auramere or a planetary Heart. Now, ignoring for a moment how they managed that, we can assume their bodies were vessels to _both_ the energy imparted by the aurameres that they've always had and whatever _extra_ it is that allows them to continue now."

"Wow—double elemental duty!" Matt shook his head at the scope of it, "No wonder their powers were going crazy—no one could hold that much energy inside!"

"My thoughts exactly!" The Professor used his magic to set the orbs containing their friends' essences to a slow orbit above his palm. "Now, if we examine the reaction they had to losing connection with the true aurameres, we can make another cognitive leap. Before separation they were overflowing, but still maintaining a material, mortal form. Drethek's theorem clearly indicates that there is only so much elemental energy a mortal, material creature can control. My theory is that they began to channel so much elemental energy that they were compelled to shed their material bodies, thus the transformation matrix I arrived to find. The fact that this didn't happen until _after_ they were severed from the aurameres can only mean that—"

"That they were actually channeling _more_ magic _after_ they were severed from the aurameres!" Elyon caught on herself. It was all beyond them, but the way the Professor explained it made it seem somehow obvious. "The true aurameres were holding back whatever this new thing was! Without them… they were overcome…"

"Indeed." Starder looked concentrated now, his mind sizzling like an electric transformer behind his glasses, processing ideas the others couldn't hope to comprehend. "Their bodies were trying to reform into a shape that would be able to survive this new level of elemental force. The true aurameres have highly sensitive limiters that prevent that body-changing amount of force from coming through, and the lingering ability the aurameres had to control the problem was removed when they lost their connection to the girls. Now, we have only to comprehend the source of this wild and unnatural ability to channel the elements, and we will have completed the circle."

"But wait—" Matt said, his eyes flashing with power, "You said that the aurameres wouldn't let you channel enough power to transform, but that isn't true!"

"Young man, I think I know those devices better than you," Starder spoke confidently, "But please, you sound convinced—educate me."

"During a battle some months ago," Matt said, as Elyon and the others gasped and cringed in terrible revelation, "they channeled enough energy to evolve into pure elementals. They lost their human minds and became beings of untainted energy. We managed to call them back and end the effect." None of the guardians' friends said a thing. They'd all realized what Matt had realized, the now-obvious root of this whole situation, and no one could find the strength to speak.

"What you're describing shouldn't be possible!" the Professor complained, frowning as he did some indescribable mental gymnastics to try and test the conclusion they'd all jumped to. "To achieve such a state, the guardians would have had to abandon all restraint, _willfully_ abandon their own self-preservation instincts upon which the limiters are founded, and attune themselves to the 'dragon' entities that govern all pure elemental force. No one could ask them to make such a horrific sacrifice as to touch the 'dragons.'"

No one spoke. Even The Oracle had lost his smile, instead staring at the floor in obvious guilt. Every person gathered around the five floating spheres was trapped in one state of agony or another, the horror of the revelation almost too much to bear.

"_No_!" Starder shouted, unable to believe it. He actually froze for a moment in sheer disbelief, nearly fumbling the girls' spheres to the floor. When he caught them again, his face was written over in anger. "How… how _could_ you!"

"We didn't _know_!" Elyon wailed, crying openly as she held on to Caleb and Yan Lin for dear life. The old woman was pale as death, and the young man was still trying to grasp something more definite than that what had happened to the girls was ultimately their fault. "Only Nerissa even realized it was possible! She suggested it and they took the option without dreaming of the consequences! When we were able to call them back to human form, we thought it was over!"

"You _didn't know_?" The answer didn't satisfy, and he turned to the Oracle with fire in his eyes. "_You_ must have known, the ancestors must have warned you what could happen! The danger involved in such an act—my god!"

"I was in no position to stop them at the time," The Oracle stated, his voice genuinely sad, "and there was little choice besides. A mad evil had seized the Hearts of several worlds and was intent on claiming them all. Their sacrifice saved all of the infinite worlds."

"Hmph—_disgusting_!" Starder held a hand over his glasses, blocking out the world for a moment. He seemed far more upset than even _this_ situation warranted, but he recovered himself before they could see more than a glimpse of it.

"Please, please, _please_ tell me you can help them!" Elyon begged, her eyes streaming, "Please don't say they sacrificed themselves—not for me! I-I would rather have been trapped forever than to lose them!"

Starder opened his eyes from whatever terrible place he'd been in and stared at the crying teenager before him like he'd never seen an upset youth in his life. Then he came fully back to the moment, and gave the young queen a furtive smile.

"Eh, yes… yes, I can save them," he said, sounding distant. "It will be as simple as guiding their reconstitution into a stable form—something at which I'm quite accomplished. Frankly, if they'd known to try, they could _probably_ have reached out to touch the dragons again, and guided _themselves_ into new forms. Of course, I can do better than the mere mindless elementals they would have been. Even still, there will be complications. _Unavoidable_ complications."

"What?" Elyon was hanging on his words, barely daring to hope her friends would recover. "Please, what's wrong?"

"Well…" Starder was obviously reluctant to give the cute, distraught little girl his bad news. "For example… what _species_ did you say these girls were again?"

"Humans," Matt answered first, when they'd finally recovered from the sheer unexpectedness of the question. He transformed quickly back to himself, mindless of who might see. "Humans from Earth, like me."

"Okay, let's see…" Starder held one of the spheres up to his eyes, the pink-glowing bauble holding everything that was Will. He stared through it for a moment, seeming to see beyond the here and now, and then pulled it away quickly with a slanted smile on his lips. "Yeah, uh… well, they certainly aren't _that_ anymore."


	3. More Than Human, and Less

I couldn't figure any way to make this chapter without big sections of it being wordy and confusing. Trust me, I tried… a lot. Of course, understanding all that's said is far from necessary to enjoying the story, so if your mind wanders or your eyes glaze over, just skip ahead. I find that I used a lot of hyphenated words (like skull-drone) in this story. I'm sure a lot of them are unnecessary. The only thing worse is my penchant for inconsistent capitalization. Still, at least I finally learned the difference between 'lose' and 'loose,' not to mention 'cloths' and 'clothes.'

**Dragon Sisters**

**Chapter 3: More than Human… and Less**

**At the Fortress of the Dragon King**

"My Lord?" A huge soldier totally encased in elaborate, bright red armor stepped up and addressed a fifteen-foot giant sitting on a grey marble throne. The giant's features were shadowed, but his huge legs were shod in black steel, the gaps in his armor showing the silver chainmail beneath it.

"Speak," A voice like a toad in a cave rumbled from the darkness, and the red soldier saluted, holding his armor-clad hand to the angular armored mask that hid his face.

"The tracking spells are showing something very strange," the soldier began, "and I thought you should be informed immediately. Sir, it looks like new D-energy channels have awakened. The scry wizards swear that they are without natural limiters."

"Indeed?" the gravely voice grated, intrigued. "Are you certain? You know the penalty if I am excited without due cause."

"We are sure enough sir. Fresh channels, unclaimed and unprotected by the old treaties and compulsion spells. They are immature, as yet, but each of them seems to have the potential of generator prime. Sir, we've detected a _full_ _set_."

"Unprotected by the treaties?" the voice chuckled with a sound like steel rasping on granite. "_Fantastic_. The Artificers swore eons ago that they would erase the secret of generating unrestricted channels from the cosmos. It would seem that some unwary fool has rediscovered their secret process."

"Yes, sir," The soldier stood at attention, knowing better than to comment without being asked. The Dragon King didn't want his opinion, merely his service.

"Where?" Asked the Dragon King.

"They were originally detected at the Center of Infinity," the soldier reported, "which was discouraging. However, they have since been moved to a minor world that has no native elementals and no particular strategic significance. Apparently this 'Meridian' was once home to a petty tyrant who posed quite a regional threat, but has lately been at peace after action by the Council of Candracar. We have full freedom to operate there, but then, so do our enemies and rivals."

"Mobilize the army immediately," the giant ordered, "Send everyone who isn't assigned to garrison. We won't be the only ones to detect this emergence, and we must be the first to lay claim. Also, release The Fang. Tell her she is authorized to use the Heart of Siph however she pleases, if it will secure for me these new channels. She's to kill anyone who gets in the way, and then kill as many witnesses as possible. In fact, just kill _everyone_ there who isn't an elemental channel or otherwise valuable as a slave. I want you to lead the assault personally, Thorngrave. You know the penalty for failure."

"Yes, sir!" the soldier in red, Thorngrave, saluted again and marched away to carry out those orders. Once his minion was out of sight, the giant leaned forward, revealing a face of black scales overlaying human features in semi-reptilian menace and a smile lined with brilliant white fangs. He looked up at the wall over the archway to his throne room, and his glowing yellow eyes narrowed in malicious glee.

"Did you hear that, 'Generator Prime?'" he asked in that inhuman voice, staring at the magical window that gave him a view to the generator room, the heart of his military machine. A human figure drenched in fire was bound in a massive artifact device, its eternal flames powering every murderous mechanism at his disposal. "Somehow, more of our half-sisters have been born. Your friends may have escaped my reach, so long ago, but these ones shall not be so fortunate. With their power added to yours, I will finally wipe out the Artificers, the last obstacle between me and the helpless sheep of the cosmos!"

The Dragon King laughed manically, and in the image on his wall, the flaming elemental wept molten, burning tears.

**At the Watchpost of the Artificers**

"Are these readings correct?" asked a youngish man with a complex tattoo decorating his face as he surveyed a great circular table above which huge holographic images were displayed. The current picture was of five iridescent bubbles, dozens of lines of data and telemetry listed beside each one. Around him, other young men and women, each with a unique mark on his or her face, continued to work at their stations in the large data control center. Beside the first speaker, another analyst nodded grimly.

"I'm afraid so, High Elder," he spoke, "New unrestricted channels. Over ten thousand years without incident, and now _this_! The Dragon King's forces are already moving, or I'll sell my eylert"

"Beautiful," the High Elder, who didn't look particularly older than anyone else there, held a hand to his head and considered the problem. "Well, I suppose we have no choice but to mobilize in response. Get orders to third fleet, I want them through a space fold within ten hours. In the meantime, I want to know how the _hell_ these things came into existence. The secret of their manufacture was stamped out at the end of the First War. We need know how they're suddenly popping up in _full sets_."

"I might have a line on that already, sir," the second man mentioned, bringing up a new file on the holographic projector. The five glowing orbs were replaced by an image of a castle floating on clouds.

"Ahh, the Center of Infinity," the High Elder recognized it immediately, "But what could the Council have to do with any of this? We haven't had any meaningful contact with them in centuries. Besides, The Oracle and his people can't directly manipulate elemental forces, that's why our ancestors gave them the aura—" the High Elder stopped as he made the connection. "That's not possible," he muttered, "It would be _far_ too much of a coincidence. The aurameres had first-generation safety precautions. I'm _sure_ the ancestors would have warned them."

"Well, sir, you know what the ancestors' writings are like. 'It would be a very bad idea,' isn't exactly the sternest lecture. I understand that the concept behind those vague guidelines was to avoid drawing attention to the subject in the first place, but the Council might have gone through with an attunement, simply because they didn't realize how much of a threat it could be. In any case, what I can't figure out is why it progressed to _this_ stage. I don't care who the girls were that those ancient tools energized, merely _attuning_ to the 'dragons' would simply have been a short, ultimately fatal bloom of impressive but limited force."

"It would have been the equivalent of three of four planetary hearts, tops, and they would have disintegrated within a few weeks, when the auramere limiters lost containment on the attunement-imprint. Honestly, I'm not trying to be a racist here, but I highly doubt any but an Artificier Savant could take what was left and make it into _this_," he waved at the reports in front of him, "That's the only way it managed to happen the _first_ time, after all."

"Yes, that is a mystery," the High Elder admitted, "This is exactly why we keep all of the Savants locked up—we don't want them recreating past mistakes whenever a curious fancy strikes them. That's what's been nagging at me—this is _impossible_ exactly _because_ everyone capable of rediscovering that forbidden processes is safely locked away. Well, all but the one—" he stopped, his eyes going wide, and now both men had to stop and blink at the terrible possibility they'd just realized.

"You don't think the Starder boy could have—" the Elder began, petrified by horror.

"No…?" his assistant said without confidence, "The Oracle would certainly have informed us if he turned up out in the infinite worlds! I mean… wouldn't he?"

"No… no he wouldn't…" the High Elder admitted, thinking quickly as he connected events in his mind, "He's never appreciated our policy of containing the Savants. Besides, Gen Starder wasn't like his father, mother, or sister; he only cared about addressing ways to cure suffering and investigating unknown phenomenon—that's why he was in the low-security containment facility where he escaped from in the first place. The Oracle would never believe him capable of what he can _really_ do. He might well have been kicking around in the infinite worlds this whole time!" He stopped and held his head with both hands as he recognized how awfully possible it all was, in a convoluted sort of way.

"Gods, no…" the High Elder moaned, and then set his jaw. "Okay, I want third fleet out of here in _five_ hours, I don't care _what_ you have to do. Go ahead and mobilize Heart Ship One too, and load the full array behind the Heart of Artria. That'll be the fleet flagship."

"Holy _Hell_, sir!" the assistant seemed stunned by that order, "it's just one backwater boony planet! I know the threat posed by the Dragon King is serious, but the '_Heartbreaker_?'" He swallowed hard. "We swore to keep that weapon sealed. Everyone will be furious with us!"

"The Dragon King has his sights on _five_ new channels, not _one_ guarded by the elder treaties, not _one_ shielded by the geas placed by Pen the Great! Each of those sources is potentially as powerful as the one he's using to hold off our _entire_ military! Can you imagine him with five times more power than he has now? _ I_ certainly can! If we can't contain him here, it'll be the end. If he captures one of our Savants too… well… that'll be it for the cosmos. There won't be anyone _left_ to get angry at us."

"My orders are simple," the High Elder looked haunted as he made his choice, "Since they are now on a non-treaty world, this will be an unofficial action. Gods help us if a shooting war breaks out with any Dragon King forces there and tests the ceasefire agreement, but this is too great a threat to ignore. Admiral Straight is going to capture those girls and put them in protective custody. But if it looks for one second like the Dragon King might get them first, she's authorized to vaporize them, even if it means taking out the _entire_ _planet_."

**At the Place Between Places**

In the eternal, multicolored void of the Between, a woman was bathing in the unbound energy of the pure elements, the five infinite 'rivers' from which all matter draws its existence. It was from here that tools like the aurameres channel power, and here where there be 'Dragons.' The woman opened her eyes, awakening from a slumber of thousands of years. Her smooth features were edged with tiny webs of soft scales around her jaw and brow, and her long, snow-white hair reflected the riot of color around her in the endless nothing-everything.

"Sisters…" she said, and roused herself, her glowing silver armor hugging her inhumanly perfect body as she stretched and worked out the kinks of ages. At length, she produced a gem from thin air, its center glowing black, sucking in the unlimited light of the Between and returning nothing; an empty, voracious pit. "I'm coming…" she whispered, and the gem created a space fold to the paltry material zone where she sensed her newborn relatives.

**In a Tiny Guest Bedroom**

"Ms. Vandom, it's time to wake up," spoke an unfamiliar voice. Just like that, Will's eyes were fluttering open, and a beautiful dream-memory of a sleepover with her friends faded away, dissolving like mist on the wind. She found herself lying under an unfamiliar ceiling, her whole body stiff and numb. As she woke up mentally, her body started to come to life with painful tingles, pins and needles spreading through her.

"Oohh," Will moaned, testing her voice, "where am I? What happened?" She thought about it for a moment, and added, "Who are you?"

"Excellent questions!" the stranger answered her, and she tried to turn her head toward him, only to find that she couldn't move. Something about that struck her as disturbing, but she couldn't really get too scared about it for some reason. "That you're alert and inquisitive is a good sign. Now, I need you to think back to your last clear memories."

"I…" Will wanted to keep asking questions, but she found it difficult to resist his request. She found herself thinking back, and the memories came to her like they'd always been there waiting for her to look for them. "Our powers were going crazy, and then we were taken to Candracar to stand trial. We…" she choked a little, "were removed as guardians. Then something strange happened… I felt like I was being torn apart. Since then… I've been dreaming."

"Excellent!" the voice sounded half-excited and half-relieved, "Lucid memory without gaps is a _very_ good sign."

"Would you _please_ tell me what's going on?" Will asked, mildly annoyed and wondering why it wasn't much more than that. She had the sense she should be either terrified, furious, or both, but just couldn't get there. She had sensation in most of her body now, but she still couldn't move.

"Indeed, now is the time for answers," the voice said, and then footsteps approaching announced the man's location. A face entered her unmoving field of vision, and now she had a visual to go with the voice. "My name is Gen Starder, and I'm your doctor. You've experienced a bizarre magical breakdown, and I was forced to take extreme measures to save your life. The good news is that your mind and soul appear perfectly intact."

"Oh God—what's the bad news?" Will had to ask. She still couldn't feel much strong emotion, but a strange doctor telling her what the 'good news' was so cheerfully could only mean something very unpleasant was waiting.

"Ah, yes, about the bad news," the doctor hemmed, looking openly apprehensive, "I fear it would be very unhealthy for you to get too excited too quickly as your body adjusts, so I've placed you under a tranquilizer spell. That's why you can't move. You'll also be experiencing emotional disconnection and trouble concentrating."

"Okay, so _you're_ to blame for that," Will agreed, "Now _what's the bad news_? Seriously, give it to me straight Doc."

"Right, well, there's no use hiding it from you, but I'm warning you—this is going to be a shock. Judging by the reactions from your friends, the circumstances you're facing now are not at all pleasant to your people."

"I _swear_, if you don't tell me _right now_—" Will muttered, straining against the emotion-controlling spell like it was a supple plastic wall around her heart.

"Okay!" the doctor seemed surprisingly intimidated, backing away. She thought she'd seen some light playing on his face, but other than the gas lamp by her bed, the room was unlit. Where had that light come from? "I'm releasing the tranquilizer now. Please, try to take things in stride. I want you to examine your hands."

Bracing herself for whatever horror might await her, Will pried herself off of the fluffy mattress and leaned forward, her body protesting like it had never bent over before in her whole life. She was wearing a silk nightgown in an ancient, baggy style, and she had to dig her arms out of its soft white caress to get a look at them. For a moment, she wasn't sure that she'd actually gotten all the silk off, because her skin was easily as pale, milky white as the cloth. It was unnerving, but hardly the horror she'd been prepared to face after the doctor's obscure warnings and odd hesitance.

"Oh _no_," Will sighed, feeling much of her stress melt away, "I've become the creature with pasty skin. Seriously, is this what you're worked up about? I mean, it's not _that_ hard to get a tan."

"You're not pale," the doctor said, standing next to the bed with a look of fixed seriousness on his face, "you're glowing."

"Hehe," Will giggled, an embarrassingly girly sound. The guy was maybe twenty something, and quite cute, but _no_ _way_. "Sorry Doc, I love flattery as much as the next girl, but: A—I've already got a boyfriend and B—you're _way_ too old for me."

"I'm not hitting on you Ms. Vandom," the Doctor waved his hand and the lamp doused out, plunging the room into darkness, "You're _glowing_."

Will's jaw dropped open, because now the only thing lighting the darkness… was _her_. Every inch of her skin was giving off a gentle white glow, and without the lamp on, visible lines of sizzling energy could be seen dancing just under the surface. There was a network of lightning leaping around under her flesh, and its motion actually made patterns on the sheets reflecting her glow.

"I need a mirror—I need a mirror _right_ _now_." Will said, her voice broken by a shiver of disbelief. The Doctor drew a circle on the air with his finger, and the space he traced transformed into a reflective disc. He sent it toward her magically with a flick of his wrist, and she reached out with a quivering hand to gaze into it.

Will didn't recognize the face in the reflection right away. For one thing, her hair was overpowering, standing up in a static-charged, spiky mass. Much more than that, however, was the fact that it was glowing neon red. Just below that ostentatious sight, her eyes had become inky black pits with two sizzling pink rings for pupil and iris, utterly inhuman. Otherwise, her flesh was as pale as her arms had been, and her lips were as black as her eyes.

"Oh my God—I look like the mutant offspring of a goth and a raver!" Will moaned, "this is… this is _way_ too trippy…" The staggered young woman tossed aside the magic mirror and shook her head. A bolt of electricity leapt from her shoulder without her even noticing and sparked the gas lamp back to light, blanking out her own glow. "_Please_ tell me you know what's going on here. Convince me I'm not dead or dreaming—or _don't_, I can't even tell what would be worse right now!"

"You are awake, and this is _very_ real," the Doctor said, his voice calm and soothing. "Your elemental powers have undergone an evolution that took your body with it. I traced the cause back to the time you took the aurameres to their zenith. As for exactly what is happening and why… I'm still working on that. Your appearance has changed, quite possibly your powers too, but you are otherwise in perfect health. You're in no medical danger at all."

"So… nothing's wrong with me… except that I'm not _human_ anymore…" Will muttered. "Heck, I don't know _what_ I am! Do you?" The question was posed mostly in annoyance, but the man's eyes lit up the moment she raised the issue.

"Actually… no!" He said it like it was a good thing, "Your human essence mixed with something else, something I've never seen before. Apparently, it's been percolating in your system since you hit zenith, and just needed the overload of yesterday to express itself fully. I built you a body that would contain that new essence correctly, but that doesn't mean I have any clue exactly what it was I made."

"And I guess the others are facing something similar?" Will worried, feeling her shock slipping away to be replaced by… what? It wasn't despair or anything else negative, that was for sure. Mostly she was just annoyed by her doctor's weird enthusiasm.

"All have changed in line with their original elemental powers," Starder agreed, "and while some of their forms are quite a bit more… 'extravagant' than yours… none of them are in any danger either."

Will nodded, wondering why she wasn't horrified or panicked. In all, she was adjusting surprisingly fast. It would have been different if she felt weird, but she actually felt _great_. Now that the numbness was gone, she felt strong, healthy, and totally energized. She wanted to jump out of bed and _move_. "I… don't get it. Why isn't this bothering me more? Am I still under your spell?"

"No, honestly," he assured her, when she gave him a glowing electrical stare of warning. Her eyes reflected her mood by charging with energy at the slightest anger or excitement. "My theory is that you're feeling elemental resonance euphoria."

"Say that again, in English," Will demanded, laying her feet on the floor and letting the nightgown flow around her. She felt it slip over her skin and knew she had essentially the same body shape as before, and then found herself asking the universe why this magical metamorphosis couldn't have come with a few more inches here and there on her scrawny body.

"Well, it's my understanding that this is not your first brush with elemental evolution." Starder gave her an inscrutable look that Will chose to ignore, instead thinking back to the nightmare that had been their final battle with Super Cedric. She had no clear memory of what had taken place while she was a living statue of pure, magical lightning, and that made a certain amount of sense if she'd really 'evolved beyond thought,' during the transformation.

"So what if it isn't?" Will found herself a bit defensive, probably because she was creeped out by the way this total stranger already knew so much about her.

"Well, that's what I'm talking about." Professor Starder marshaled his face into one of the warmest, friendliest smiles Will had ever seen, leaving it very difficult for her to continue blindly mistrusting him by reflex. "It is widely accepted that pure elemental existence is a pristine and blissful state, essentially the greatest feeling possible—and I suspect this to be what rendered you all blank during that incident. Elemental Resonance Euphoria, or ERE, is what we call it when transforming into a being of pure energy blanks out a person's capacity for rational thought."

"You say that like it happens a lot," Will wanted to groan with anxiety, but she just felt too dang good. She'd much rather have giggled or burst spontaneously into song, but that really didn't suit the mood. "As far as I know, we're the only ones that have ever managed that particular transformation!"

Starder answered Will's distrust with a laughing expression that eased the mind and soothed the soul. It was an uncanny effect, similar to what Matt's grandfather and Hay Lin's grandmother could achieve with their wise eyes and easygoing grins. To see it on the face of a guy who couldn't be thirty yet was a little disconcerting, but that didn't stop Will from being disarmed by the pure, platonic charm he gave off.

"I"ll admit that the way you got there was rather unique, but this transformation is as old as elemental magic itself. How and why we got you to where you are now is where things really start to get interesting, but I'll save that for later." Starder paused to guide Will over to a wardrobe like he'd read her mind. She needed clothes, clothes so she could get out of here and find everyone and be _certain_ this was all real. Although he was a doctor and had already seen her naked and inside-out as he rebuilt her body, he still turned his back politely as she dug into it. "I'm sure you'd like some space to get your footing and check up on your friends, and I'm more than happy to let you go… _after_ I give you a quick rundown on your… 'body situation.'"

Will grunted her understanding as she rummaged in the wardrobe. As she stripped off the nightgown, the room brightened with her unleashed, full-body glow. The glow flickered as she struggled to get herself into a set of unfamiliar garments.

"Now, to keep your mind intact, I had to reconstruct you in a way that would reduce the ERE effect as much as possible, but I couldn't completely negate it. I'm sorry. You're going to feel _quite_ good most of the time, even without a reason to—heck, even when you have good reasons not to. Actually, from what I've observed of your friends, you won't begin to feel uncomfortable at all until you start to come to terms with how _this_ will change your life… with how others are going to see you now that you're… different."

"Oh dangit!" Will collapsed as a sudden pain pierced her chest. She saw her mother, she saw Matt, and she saw her entire life melting away. She could never go back to it looking like this. Her body's light flickered and died, her skin becoming dull pearl like an unlit lamp and her hair flattening to lifeless ruby. "_Why_ did you have to remind me? My life… is gone! How…"

"No need for theatrics—I can help you salvage your normal lives," the doctor assured her as he talked over his shoulder, and the confidence in his voice helped her to shove away the pain that had just assaulted her all at once. "Nothing is over. Things will simply be… _different_, somewhat more complicated. If you're willing to do the work, you can have it _all_ back."

"Ug… right…" Will bottled all that pain up and set it aside for a time when she could do something about it. Her sense of general well-being returned immediately, her skin re-lighting and her hair flickering on like a red fluorescent spotlight. Then she got back to dressing herself. She was in control, _oh yeah_. "Because when has anything ever been easy? My—we're on Meridian, aren't we?" Will changed the subject.

"Indeed, Queen Elyon was gracious enough to grant me the castle facilities to engineer your recovery," Starder admitted, "How did you know?"

"Oh, I had a clue," Will replied, and stepped away from the wardrobe and back into view. She was wearing a white dress of a thick, soft material that buttoned down the front and left her pearly-white shoulders exposed. The cut of the dress' brown leather corset was designed to highlight the cleavage, which meant that to Will, it was designed to remind her that she didn't have much yet. "I need to see the others, like, _yesterday_."

"Feel free to look around for them, they're all awake and healthy." He quirked a smile, "There are just a few more quick warnings before you go. First, careful about getting excited, your powers are currently much more sensitive to your emotional state than ever before. The castle has already suffered some collateral damage from when one or another of your friends' shock overpowered her energy high, as yours nearly did moments ago. The Queen was surprisingly understanding, but I'd think you'd want to avoid knocking down her house."

"Oh boy… yeah," Will agreed, imagining what the others must have felt when they woke up. What would they look like now? Could someone really have had such an unflattering transformation that they threw a fit? Cornelia and Taranee each came to mind, although different things were liable to set them off. "Anything else?"

"Your collar." Starder drew her attention to a new piece of jewelry she'd been too distracted to notice—a black metal choker. Checking it now, she had no idea why she didn't feel it constricting her breathing, and wondered how the heck they'd get it on and off without any kind of clasp. "Please don't fiddle with that," Starder requested, when she began to probe at it, "It's your limiter."

"My whatnow?" Will asked. This was brand new information to her.

"It regulates the amount of energy you channel from the Between," Starter explained, "just like the aurameres _used_ to do. If it is damaged or removed, you'll bloom with elemental force until your mind blanks out, and then eventually, you'll disintegrate."

"Wow, yeah, disintegration is _bad_," Will agreed, quickly pulling her hand away from it, eyes wide. The idea that she was now a walking time bomb, besides merely a freak of magical cosmetic surgery, was nearly enough to send her back into the panic-attack from before. She decided to distract herself again. "So what are you going to be doing again… while I'm walking around, trying not to disintegrate myself or the castle?"

"I'm going to be working on a way for you to return to your human form," Starder said, turning to walk away. "I've got a good idea of how to do it, too—enough to have you back to your family and your life by tomorrow with no one the wiser."

"_Really_?" Will shouted, ecstatic at that news. Her skin immediately started to glow like a Las Vegas billboard, a flare of leaping electrical auroras sizzling along her body, her hair like a red neon beacon. The doctor turned and gave her a confident smile.

"Really. That's actually the news that got your friends out of their rather destructive reactions, too. The flip side of that is less pleasant," Starder qualified as he turned to walk away again, "because if I can't figure out why this all happened, the Council won't let me send you home, anyway. Sorry to say."

Will deflated slightly as she remembered that caveat of their sentence. Then again, this guy was apparently every bit the hot-stuff Taranee had imagined him to be, considering he'd saved their lives when no one else had a clue. That gave her quite a bit of confidence that he could pull this together too.

"Err, good luck!" Will called after him, but his mind was already miles away. Creasing her pale new face in resignation, she set off to find her friends.

Will got about ten feet away from the room she'd slept in before a rush of air and a squeal of happiness announced a new visitor, and Elyon swooped down, flying like a comet, to practically tackle her into a hug. Will found herself laughing despite the circumstances, and remembered Starder's warning about her artificially elevated mood. In a way it was nice to not wallow in self-pity, but she couldn't help but feel a little controlled. Of course, her friends, the happy blond now wrapped around her shoulders included, probably wouldn't have let her angst about it anyway.

"Will, it's so good to see you!" Elyon said, "You're the last one that Professor Starder 'reconstituted,' and that means all my friends survived!"

"Yeah, I survived," Will let a little sarcasm creep in, "if you call this 'surviving.' I'm a human neon sign. I could be my own nightlight."

"Huh," Elyon stepped back and looked her from head to toe, and then huffed and rolled her eyes. "Well, I happen to think you look _incredible_. Not the least because you're not _dead_. All five of you got a new look, and if you're bummed about not being your old selves anymore, just remember that most of the people I know these days aren't human either. I've gotten used to it."

"Somehow, I doubt my _mom_ will see it that way," Will told Elyon, and her friend hugged her close again to lead her down the hall. "Not to mention all the other people on Earth who don't have a clue about magic."

"Well, about that," Elyon continued their conversation with a bit more restraint, "The Professor had some ideas about how to change you all back into your human bodies. I didn't really understand, but apparently it would make _this_ just like your guardian transformations. He was pretty hard to follow when he got all enthusiastic about it."

"Yeah… uh… where did The Oracle get that joker anyway?" Will asked. She had a nagging feeling about him, and couldn't let it drop. Something about him was just unreal. "He's got some kind of magical remedy for everything. It's a little too convenient to believe."

"Well, I sort of wondered about that too," Elyon said, leading Will down one hall and up another. Will realized she was already lost, and wondered just how much the architecture had rearranged since Elyon had taken over as queen. "I asked The Oracle a few questions before we left Candracar. You know how hard it is to get a straight answer out of that guy, but I did learn a little. Apparently, he's an Artificer. They're the same people who made the aurameres, among other magical artifacts that you find now and then, and they've got one of the oldest civilizations in all the infinite worlds. Their success is based on technology that uses magic, and that was about all I could manage to squeeze out of him. He kept changing the subject."

"Oh… nevermind," Will let it go. Whatever trouble she was picking up on about that guy, it couldn't be _that_ serious as long as The Oracle trusted him. "So, how about the others?"

"I was getting there," Elyon said, leading her up a stairway and out a set of double doors into the garden courtyard. A great fountain dominated the area, flowerbeds and stone pathways arranged around it for maximum aesthetic effect. "And here we are. Looks like two out of four are still where I left them all when I came to get you."

"Wahooo!" a scream of excitement met them almost the moment they were out the door, and Elyon vanished in a frizz of energy just in time to avoid the blast of water that slammed Will over like eight fire hoses at once. Caught off guard, Will gargled the cool water as it rushed over her, the tide buffeting her body, and then gasped for air when the rogue land-wave passed. She was left coughing on the ground, the thick dress drenched and heavy as Elyon reappeared.

"Yeah, uh, looks like they're still rough-housing out here. Err, I guess I should have warned you." Elyon toyed sheepishly with one of her braids for a second and then snapped her fingers. Will was perfectly dry in an instant, good as new before she could even get to her feet.

"I'm gonna get you Taranee!" Irma's voice was exuberant and joyful, and Will looked over to see her two friends engaged in something of a battle.

Irma was standing on top of a pillar of water, waving and weaving through the air like she'd grown a gigantic snake's tail, blasting around the area with jets of water from her hands and supplemented every now and then by more water from the fountain. Taranee was running around through the garden, ducking and weaving or intercepting with bursts of fire, almost incoherent with laughter and happy squeals at every near-miss. They were both moving around too much to get a good look at them, but they were definitely at least as changed as Will had been.

"Hah, too slow!" Taranee dodged another jet of water, then turned around and pointed both hands at an over-extended Irma, "Take this!" Fire enveloped Taranee's arms and belched forward like her palms were the exhaust of an incinerator furnace. The absurdly huge fireball that flashed forward slapped aside Irma's wobbling water podium and the whole affair exploded into steam, Irma vanishing in the heat flash.

"IRMA!" Will was astonished and terrified at the same time, and she roiled with electrical energy in response. The shout finally got Taranee's attention, and she turned and gave Will a gigantic smile. Rushing up, her burgundy skirt bellowed and twisted below her matching sleeveless vest.

"Hey, Will!" she greeted her friend as though nothing odd was going on. This close, Will could finally see the fine network of orange, glowing lines covering her skin, the pattern very much like a spider's web or the cracks that form in drying clay. That and eyes like two glowing coals under the shield of her glasses were the only changes that were outwardly obvious. "Glad to see you're finally up and around. The rest of us have been trying out our new powers."

"New powers?" Will was still trying to get past the sight of Taranee, a petite, seventy-five pound, chocolate-skinned china doll, venting flames like a fifty ton steel-smelting furnace. Not to mention the sight of Irma dissolving into a cloud of steam.

"Yes, new powers to go with the extreme makeover," Irma's voice came clearly from the puddle she'd made when she'd accidentally power-washed Will. "Go figure, right?" In a flash of motion too quick to follow, the tiny puddle shot upward and became a watery outline of Irma. Then the water-statue solidified, and _was_ Irma, and Will had to blink a few times before she could believe her eyes.

"Oh Boy… a little help, Elyon? This _worked_ the last few times I did it…" Irma begged as she flushed crimson. She'd remade herself from the water perfectly, but was now wearing nothing but her limiter collar, and was scrambling to cover herself as everyone winced in sympathy and Elyon snapped up an illusion.

The next moment, Irma was magically decent again, wearing the first thing that Elyon had been able to think of, a golden ball gown that looked oddly familiar to all of them. Above its low-cut, strapless design, Irma had also come away well from the transformation. She had a few patches of shiny scales in a spectrum of blues and greens decorating some aesthetically balanced places around her face and the rest of her skin, and her hair had blue streaks. Her eyes were her old human pair, but had a low-key blue glow now.

"Wow, not that I'm complaining," Irma sighed, examining the alternative to nudity, "but really, 'Beauty and the Beast?"

"How about you stop criticizing my taste in movies," Elyon muttered through a furious blush, "and find some way to occupy yourself that doesn't destroy your _borrowed_ clothes?"

"Alright!" Irma swallowed her laugh and waved to Will as she walked quickly back inside. She had to get new clothes before Elyon's spell faded. Apparently, Elyon thought twice about letting her off so easily, and her dress _did_ vanish. She shrieked and exploded into water, slithering inside and out of sight as a puddle.

"And don't get my carpets wet!" Elyon called after her, amid the giggles from Taranee and Will. They all had a good moment of laughter, and then the severity of the situation finally caught up with them again. Will and Taranee looked at one another, half admiring and half terrified.

"So, one day later, and we're not guardians anymore," Taranee summed up their situation, blinking her blazing eyes like two signal beacons in the face of a doll, all framed by her same short, unevenly braided hair. The effect was creepy, and made Will realize that all these magical oddities really looked _much_ cooler on their mature, guardian bodies. "Actually, were not even _humans_ anymore, although I suppose things could be worse. I mean, these changes mostly seem to be cosmetic—my eyes are glowing pits in my face, but I still can't see without my glasses," she tapped at them with a wry smile. Then she frowned. "At least… for _us_ the changes seem to be mostly cosmetic."

"Okay, _that_ sounds like the introduction to a tale of woe," Will replied, taking in Taranee's solemn expression. "How bad was it for Hay Lin and Cornelia? I heard there was some damage to the castle."

"Oh, _was_ there!" Elyon huffed, old anger coming back fresh on her face, "Hay Lin was so shocked the first time she began to merge with the air, she screamed and knocked out all the windows in the west wing!"

"So she's… air...?" Will tried to imagine it and came away with an image of her friend as an elemental during their fight with Super Cedric.

"Yeah, just completely, invisibly merged with her element, exactly like Irma was doing… only drier," Taranee explained, "Of course, she got over all of that _really_ quickly, and we haven't seen her come back down to earth since. She's up in the stratosphere somewhere right now. I can call her down if you want—"

"That's okay, let her have her fun," Will shook her head, "Now what about _Cornelia_?"

"Ah… I'm afraid she kind of got the worst of the whole transformations thing," Elyon said, looking troubled. Will bit her lip, noting that her prediction had been half-correct and wondering how bad it had come out. If Cornelia felt disfigured by her transformation, the emotional reaction might well have leveled a small city. The fit she'd thrown the last time she got a bad zit was proof of that much. "We keep trying to explain to her that it's really not at all bad, and that the Professor is going to make sure you can all change back when you want to, but she hasn't been easy to talk to. I'm not sure _where_ she's gotten to now."

"Oh, you won't have to look far," Taranee pointed toward a corner of the garden. The beautiful flowerbeds gradually withered and browned in that direction, until they finally erupted into black thorn bushes. The thorns rose up in a looping wall, and it didn't take an artificer to guess where Cornelia was moping. "She's been out of her mind ever since Professor Starder conjured a mirror for her. That first fit sent tree branches through half the floors and walls of the north wing, and now even after he calmed her down, her mood has been taking a toll on the environment."

"I'm really starting to get worried about her," Elyon said, and her face was written through with her concern. She looked at Will with a pleading expression, "I wasn't able to cheer her up myself."

"Urg," Will grunted in resignation, "yeah, I'd better get on top of that. Taranee, you're with me. Elyon, do you think you could go get the boys?" Will didn't have to describe who she was talking about, there were only two who really qualified right now. "We might need their help if I can't snap her out of this."

"Oh, right!" Elyon nodded, catching on immediately, and took off like a ballistic missile.

As she watched Elyon go, Will felt a thrill of fear. She considered Matt again, and was forced to think about Matt seeing her like she was now. How would he react? By now he had to know that she wasn't coming back the same person she'd been, at least not on the outside. What if he didn't even want to see her?

"Will, Matt isn't going to dump you because of a little involuntary makeover," Taranee surprised Will by literally reading her mind, "so don't you start coming apart over the same thing that made Cornelia lose _her_ mind." At the comparison, Will came back to her senses with an absent nod, shoving aside her fears yet again. She had a friend to take care of.

"Yeah, I'm fine. So, Taranee," Will tried to lighten the mood and change the subject as she set off toward the depressed part of the garden, "can you 'merge with your element' too? I'm a little too nervous about 'becoming electricity' to try for myself."

"Oh, yeah," Taranee nodded, happy that Will was coping so well, but a little put off by this new subject. "I've been trying not to, though. The one time I let myself go, I became fire all right. It was my left hand only, and the flare of heat basically _exploded_. I don't know what I've got inside me… but it is something entirely different than anything I've had to control before."

"If anyone can handle it, it's you, T," Will said, and she knew the other girl could read her honesty out of her mind. Taranee blushed at Will's genuine confidence, and then they were at the edge of the briar patch.

"Cornelia?" Will called, deciding it was better not to delay. Now that she'd had some time and space to think, she had several choice questions for Starder, and it would save all kinds of time if they all heard the answers at once. Beyond that, it was eating her up inside to see her friend in such a state.

"Will?" Cornelia's voice came out from behind the solid wall of thorny, black branches, sounding cautiously pleased. "I'm… happy you're up and around." Her hesitation told Will all she needed to know about the blonde's current mood. If it weren't enough, her voice was edged by sniffles and other tells that she was crying.

"Well same to you, and can I get in and see you?" Will did her best to sound reasonable and not urgent, hoping to coax her out of her shell. "We all need to group up so we can go and learn more about these changes together."

"Uhhuh," Cornelia coughed past some tears, "that's okay." She sniffed loudly, "I'm just going to sit here until that weirdo finds a way to change me back. You guys go ahead without me."

"Eh," Will didn't know what to do next, so she turned to Taranee and gave her a questioning look. "_Just how bad is it_?" Will asked, mind-to-mind to avoid embarrassing Cornelia further, "_She sounds like somebody told her that her favorite clothing designer just died._"

"_It's… hard to explain_," Taranee hedged again, a sure sign that it really was bad, "_and Cornelia made us promise not to describe it to anyone who hadn't seen it yet_." Will contemplated that with mild disbelief, and then sighed again as she searched for the strength to deal with it all.

There were definitely more important things to worry about than what they saw in the mirror right now, but really she _couldn't_ justify being angry at Cornelia. Would she really have reacted much better if she herself had woken up somehow disfigured? She doubted it, and that gave her nothing but sympathy for the girl, even as she cursed the entire situation. At the moment, Will just really, really wanted to be inside those brambles so she could confront her friend, face to face. The desire was so hot and immediate, it seemed to boil around her heart.

Suddenly, Will felt an intense head rush, her vision flared to blank white, and a tingle raced across her body. When the disorientation passed and her vision snapped back to clarity, Will was looking at a stunned Cornelia from the inside of the thorny shelter. Instinctively, she knew she'd somehow moved herself there, but the mechanics of it completely escaped her.

"_Will! WILL! Are you alright_?" Taranee asked into her mind, frantic. Will let her somewhat bewildered mind act to reassure the girl reading it, but didn't actually form words as she waited out her own shock. "_You just like—I don't know—zapped yourself away! I almost panicked until I heard your thoughts reappear behind the thorns! What happened_?"

"Eeeep!" Cornelia shrieked when she recovered from her surprise, and a wall of dirt shot out of the ground to separate them, dividing the small space enclosed by the thorns in half. "Ah… cool new power, Will," Cornelia admitted, her voice drenched in shame.

"Uh, hey Cornelia," Will half-chuckled at the awkward and unexpected circumstances, "Sorry to barge in—I didn't really know I could do that. But hey, as long as I'm here, how about you put down the mud and let me get a look at you?"

At first, Will didn't think it was going to work, and she'd be trapped precariously between a rock and some thorn bushes until she figured out how to do that transportation trick on purpose or somebody broke her out. Then, slowly at first, the thin veil of muck and pebbles Cornelia had dredged up in her panic began to crumble away. Within a few seconds, the light Will was casting from her own skin shone over at her friend, and it took every ounce of her self control not to gasp as she took in what she saw.

Cornelia had merged with the earth that was her element. Her skin at the moment was the same sandy brown as the soil she'd been shifting around, with the same rough texture, and was shot through with bits of gravel and an occasional dead root. Her magnificent hair remained as golden and luxurious as ever, but was animate as it had been during her full-elemental transformation, and quivered and quested randomly in the enclosed space like a nest of curious golden snakes. Her eyes were two pits of deep green, and the tears she couldn't hide flowed as mud down her cheeks.

"Oh, Cornelia…" Will couldn't find anything more appropriate to say, and so simply expressed her sympathy by scooting in and wrapping her arms around the despondent girl. As she did, she finally noticed the dress Cornelia was wearing, a long-sleeved number that had been pulled straight from a play about King Arthur, which had been concealed by the fact that it had turned to soil along with her body. Cornelia cried hopelessly into Will's borrowed dress, and the white expanses smeared with mud on the front and dirt everywhere Cornelia touched as she wrapped her arms around her friend.

"At… at first…" Cornelia began to choke an explanation past her tears, "I was fine… just a little greener than human with some trippy new tattoo patterns here and there." She breathed heavily to calm her sobs and let her shaking die down as she took in Will's freely offered support. "The moment I stepped on the stone floor, my body became stone—so heavy I cracked the bed in half. That doctor guy tried to tell me I could control it, but I was so upset, I chased him out of the room with what was left of the bed. I… I kinda lost it for a while until Elyon and Irma managed to explain that we'd be able to change back soon. They got me out here, and I became… _this_."

"Shhh," Will hushed Cornelia's sobs as she rocked the girl's head against her stomach. For a while, she just let Cornelia spill it all out of her system, ignoring the disturbing texture of her body. Of course, she almost lost it and backed off when Cornelia's hair, reacting to her clingy mood, wrapped itself around Will's hands, arms, and again around her back. Will endured the creepy feel of its silky-softness crawling around her, and tried to forget the way it had nearly strangled Cedric under different circumstances.

"Oh, Will, what am I going to do?" Cornelia moaned quietly, "I can't face people looking like whatever bit of dirt or rock I'm standing on! I can't face _Caleb_!"

"Come on now," Will helped Cornelia stand up, urging her along as fast as she could without pulling on the hair wrapped around her, "You've got to stop moping like this. You said yourself that you didn't look like this right away—there's got to be a way to get you back to looking halfway human again, even without The Oracle's professor-guy zapping us all normal. I'm positive of it—and you know we'll all do _everything_ we can to help."

Cornelia sniffled and considered Will's confident claim. Somehow, she couldn't wallow in self-pity with the smaller girl exuding so much confidence, and the natural euphoria of being half-elemental finally fought its way past her bleak despair. She smiled despite herself, sending cracks and furrows through her earthen face, and Will nearly sighed in relief.

"I'm holding you to that claim, missy," Cornelia grilled her friend playfully as she managed to unwind her hair for the most part. The unruly mass retreated behind her head and rippled in conjunction with her easing stress. Without releasing her glowing leader, Cornelia bundled her up into a powerful hug. "I'm sorry I was being such a moody little creep," Cornelia apologized as Will had the breath squeezed out of her. Her soil-form had some serious grip.

Completely by accident, Will and Cornelia's limiter necklaces tapped together with a _clink_ and a magic _sizzle_. The instant they touched, Will gasped in sudden discomfort as her body's light doused out, and Cornelia moaned with the sensation of change. Her body reverted to flesh in a flowing transformation that spread out from the collar, and in moments she was her regular self—her regular, _altered_ self, that is. Her skin was green as a potted plant, and had faint, swirling tattoo patterns in lighter green that seemed to be underneath her skin. Her eyes were still two green spotlights. Not that Will was in any state to notice any of this—without her glow, the area was pitch-dark, and she was under serious strain during the forced restriction of her powers.

"What? I'm—I'm not dirt!" Cornelia could feel it, even if she couldn't see it, and rubbed her hands together gloriously in the dark as she kept herself wrapped around Will.

"Great… now… stop!" Will finally shoved Cornelia away, a bit harder than she'd intended to, admittedly. The room lit again with her glow the moment their necklaces no longer touched, and Will crumbled to the dirt to catch her breath after the awful strain she'd been under. It had been like someone was softly crushing her chest from inside her skin; not exactly painful, but unbearable none the less.

"NO!" Cornelia moaned her despair as she immediately turned back into a mottled statue of dirt, rock, and plant debris. "Not again! What happened?"

"It was our limiters… they must have doubled up force when they touched!" Will realized, absently feeling the simple band of black metal around her throat. "God, it was unbearable! But… it let you un-merge from the earth."

"So… you won't—" Cornelia began, hopeful, only for Will to shoot her a dirty look. "Okay, so yeah, can't do that if it makes you guys hurt," she admitted the next moment, looking down. Her hopes had just been thoroughly dashed.

"I have a better idea anyway," Will said, looking around at the solid shell of thorns enclosing them. "You were always a bit stronger than us—it must have translated to these new bodies somehow. I doubt Dr. Starder took that into account when he was making these things," she patted at her limiter, "so I figure your power is still leaking out of control past yours. All we have to do is get him to adjust it—or you could just try harder to get yourself in line."

"Heck no!" Cornelia jolted to her feet, energized, "this is _clearly_ that quack's fault! I'm going right now to give him a piece of my mind about passing out shoddy equipment like this!"

Immediately, the thorns receded into the ground, opening them up to the sky and the rest of the garden. Cornelia nodded at Taranee, starting immediately off to search out the wayward Artificer who was destined to get a piece of her frustration and pain squarely in his ears. Then she nearly bungled directly into Elyon, Matt, and _Caleb_, who'd only just arrived on the scene themselves.

Cornelia hesitated for a moment, feeling a strong urge to hide before Caleb could realize what he was looking at, and then was consumed by the spirit of bravado that came with her new hope. There was an entirely different way to distract him that was certain to work, and she executed the plan before she could lose her nerve.

She sidled up to him before he could get half a clue what had just happened, grabbed him by the lapels of his trench coat, and used her earth-given strength to pull him down to her level and into an energetic kiss. His eyes bulged for a moment, and all around them, the garden exploded into lively bloom, becoming ten times more wildly colorful than it had ever been in seconds of riotous growth. Finally, she pushed Caleb aside, letting him fall away, cross-eyed with shock, and set off again.

"Sorry I can't stay to chat, honey," Cornelia licked her dirt tongue along her soil lips as she rushed away, "I have a doctor's appointment!"

"Gah!" Caleb finally choked as he spat and sputtered, his surprise stripping him of any tact or survival instinct, "Tastes like dirt!"

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that!" Cornelia's annoyed voice came over her shoulder as she hurried away. Everyone was laughing heartily as she quickly vanished into the castle, transforming into a walking statue the moment she set foot on the stone floors.

"Will!" Matt managed to catch her attention as Elyon helped the shocked Caleb get to his feet, giggling all the while. Will turned to him, not quite able to meet his eye as she felt his gaze take in her new looks. She was basically waiting for him to express his shock and rejection. What she got was definitely shock, but it gave way to happiness and precipitated a sudden, unexpected hug. "I'm so glad you're still with us! God, I was so sure I was going to lose you, I couldn't stand it!"

"But… but I'm…" Will managed to stammer a start to her fears, overcome by his closeness and his obvious happiness. This was not at all what she'd been expecting.

"You're beautiful as ever… if not _more_ beautiful," Matt said exactly what Will's fragile confidence needed to hear. "How many guys can say their girlfriend _literally_ glows? Of course, I understand you'd want your normal body back, but even if you never went back to normal, you'd still be my girl. If you can accept a guy that's sometimes a muscle-bound angel without a face, I don't know how I couldn't accept a girl who's so literally _radiant_."

"Oh, _you_," Will was speechless, and buried her face in his chest as she flushed. The blush transferred to her powers, and she lit up like a lighthouse beacon. The glow was soon so bright that you couldn't even look in her general direction without being blinded, and everyone began to edge away from her with muttered discomfort and surprise.

"Uh, Will?" Matt prompted her to get her act together as he clenched his eyes and turned away, faced with brightness and heat that edged on painful.

"Sorry!" she quickly wrestled herself under control, leaving spots in everyone's eyes. Even still, she was a magnitude brighter than she'd been while she was worried. A soft smile played on her lips as she clung to Matt's arm. "Come on everyone! We'd better catch Cornelia before she does something drastic to our absent-minded professor."

"Hey! Aren't you forgetting someone?" Hay Lin's voice came out of nowhere, and Will nearly jolted out of her skin in surprise. Of course, she had totally forgotten, and winced at her mistake as she watched Hay Lin materialize out of the thin air. "I saw your 'signal beacon' and figured I'd better show up. Glad I did. Out of sight, out of mind, huh guys?"

The tiny Asian girl came together in a swirling breeze, fading into existence from her head to her feet. The first thing Will noticed was her black hair, which was unbound by her usual pigtails and hung in a solid mass down her back, gathering around her knees. The always-pretty length had been marbled with ash and blue highlights, and wavered and shimmered in the sudden breeze. Her skin had gone mottled with thousands of blue and grey speckles that gathered in the same eye-catching, feature-framing way as Irma's scales, and her eyes were two solid grey orbs, like her skull was full of clouds. She was wearing a man's white button-down work-shirt and a blue skirt.

"Okay, now that Hay Lin is here," Will qualified her earlier statement, "We can go pick up Irma, and _then_ go to the good doctor. He'll just have to manage Cornelia on his own until then."

"Poor guy," Caleb muttered sarcastically as he cleared the last of the dirt out of his mouth. The gathered friends all laughed again.

**Professor Starder's Guestroom**

Professor Gen Starder sat back, balancing a wooden chair on its hind legs as he rested his feet on the small table in the tiny, nondescript guestroom he'd chosen to work in. As he rocked precariously in the chair, he held his hands above his chest and stared into the space between them. Right there, a small gem was taking shape, red, green, blue, aqua, and pink lights playing around its smooth surface. The lights collected in discreet dots and percolated in swirling masses that entered the central gem and vanished in discreet, majestically coordinated patterns. Between his fingers, a new artifact was taking shape.

"Hey, egg-head!" the door burst in with sudden jarring force, a rough, gravely statue of a thin young girl with brilliant golden hair stamping in with a thunder that shook the room. "I need you to fix this defective 'limiter' thing! It touched Will's, and I was able to control my powers right. So do something about it!" At first he didn't move, staying focused on whatever he was working on. Cornelia opened her mouth to enter a new phase of haranguing, when she was caught up short by her limiter collar tightening suddenly. She almost started to choke, but noticed the professor holding up a finger for a moment's patience as he very carefully set the glowing ball down into a strange metal tray on the table and clapped the chair back down onto all four legs.

"You're describing an interesting phenomenon," Starder told her, when he finally looked up. "It could be that your limiter requires adjustment—I fear I had time for nothing more than manufacturing five identical units. Please call out if you experience any discomfort."

"Discomfort?" Cornelia managed to squeal past the tightened collar. Before she could rethink her demand, Starder wiggled his fingers in the general direction of her neck. The limiter collar immediately began to change, gaining a tiny bit of girth and growing a few studs that blended into its otherwise rounded hoop. The effect was immediate, Cornelia withering back to a being of flesh as the magical device gained power. Then there was a sensation like a great fist clamping around her chest from inside her skin, and she gasped out, "STOP!" Starder stopped immediately, arching an eyebrow for further instructions. "Okay, back up a little," Cornelia spoke under the strain. Starder wiggled his fingers again, and now the pressure released. "Good!" Cornelia stopped him at just the right moment.

"Oh YES!" the blond looked down at her green hands, now soft and smooth again. She might have been a bit green, but the variety of tattooed, vaguely Celtic and Asian patterns growing under her skin were gorgeous in their own right, and wonderfully exotic besides. _This_ she could stand looking at, at least part-time, and her relief was so powerful that she almost started to cry again. "Um… thank you…" Cornelia finally remembered who she owed this all to, and the Professor nodded absently as he turned back and considered the little sphere he'd been working on.

"For future note, your inherent ability to channel elemental energy is about one point two times greater than that of your friends'." He plucked the orb off its pedestal and kicked back into the chair so quickly that it was impossible that he didn't fall. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'd like to finish this new device. Its construction represents an entirely new branch of a rather ancient type of magi-technology that I just invented yesterday, and its taking more time and concentration than I originally projected."

"Right… uh… I'll just…" Cornelia struggled for some intelligent-sounding response to a statement like that, "try out my powers again, just in case I need another resizing."

Starder nodded her on her way, and she took a deep breath, suddenly intent on doing this right. She doubted she would impress a sorcerer of his obviously intense education and experience, but she certainly didn't want to bungle things. In a way, she felt like she was about to represent the value of what he'd worked to save. When she was settled, she concentrated, willingly accepting the press of the stones she could feel calling up through her feet.

The sensation of turning back to stone was cool, and spread quickly along with a feeling of intense strength and solidity. Of course, she'd have to be incredibly strong to still be able to move while made out of solid granite, so that made perfect sense to her, in a twisted, magical sort of way. Now that she wasn't terrified and miserable over the effect, she got a full feel of it, and realized an entirely new dimension. Suddenly, she sank into the stone floor like a water stream settling into a pond. She vanished totally, merged with her element, and Starder spared a moment's glance to smile in simple wonder. A giggle of satisfaction came from nowhere and everywhere in the room.

"Cornelia?" Will's voice echoed around the corner, and a cavalcade of footsteps on the hallway carpets announced the arrival of quite a crowd. With a sigh, Starder winced and stopped trying to work on the device. If they were all here, it was time for him to catch them up on their situation. There was no telling when he'd get them all together again, and he sure didn't want to explain it all more than once.

"Over here," Starder called out the door, and soon enough Will's head peeked around the doorframe, casting the room in her hair's bright red glow. "Please, everyone, come on in. I have some things to tell you all, and I'm sure you each have questions too. We might as well get that out of the way while you're all together."

"I actually had the same idea," Will admitted, gesturing for everyone to follow her into Starder's little guest room. There weren't nearly enough chairs, until Elyon snapped her fingers and made a flock of chairs migrate in from other nearby rooms. The chairs arranged in a half circle as Starder stood up and cleared away the table he'd been leaning on, giving him space to stand in the middle, right in front of the room's large window. In a few moments, they were all seated, arrayed to either side of Will, Elyon keeping her feet as she leaned on the only empty chair. "Uh, Cornelia was in here, right?"

"Up here!" Cornelia, still made of stone, emerged from the ceiling up to her hips, giving them all a jaunty wave before slipping all the way out and flipping to the floor. She landed on her feet hard, jolting the whole room and shattering the stones under her, then stood up to perform an Olympic-style pose as she turned herself back into plain flesh. Her friends all gave her cheers and whistles as Elyon cringed at her shattered floor.

"Bravo! I give it a ten!" Irma declared, as Cornelia moved to apologize to Elyon with a hug, her eyes slipping over to send Caleb a wink. She finally got settled too, and Starder drew everyone's attention by flipping a chair around and sitting on it backwards, arms folded on its back.

"Do you want to go first, or should I?" he asked, unassuming and pleasant.

"We'll go first," Will quickly spoke for the group, "I've got a list of questions already, and if you just start talking, we'll probably just wind up confused again."

"Fair enough," Starder smiled sheepishly and nodded at that evaluation, "Shoot."

"Okay, so who are you, where are you from, and why did you help us?" Will began. If The Oracle was going to be cagey about this guy, it was time to see if it was a conspiracy or just the elder entity being himself.

"My name is Professor Gen Starder, Ph.D. M.D. T.D. Qr.D. M.K.T.D. Anyway, I come from a species of beings you know as the Artificers. Our world is called Artria, and it is very much like Earth and Meridian, from what I understand. As for why I helped you—there are many ways to answer. I owed The Oracle a favor, your problem piqued my interest, I try to always help people when they have problems I'm uniquely equipped to solve… the list goes on."

"I've got a question," Irma cut in, overriding Will and getting a dirty look for her effort. She'd gone to the wardrobes one last time and come back with a green felt gown that brought out odd highlights in her patchy scales, and it rustled as she stood up to face the whole room as she made her point. "I was the first one you 'reconstituted,' and while it's been a little difficult to worry, with… what did you call it? Elemental resonance euphoria?"

"Call it ERE," the doctor noted with a smile.

"But anyway," she nodded at his advice, "I've been up for twelve hours, and in all that time, I haven't been hungry, thirsty, too hot, too cold, sleepy, or felt any need to use the bathroom. I'm starting to get a little creeped out."

"Hey, you know, I was second," Taranee noted, "and that stuff goes double for me! Irma is water, literally, so maybe she wouldn't get thirsty, but what about me? And I don't think I've ever gone four waking hours without a bathroom break in my life!"

"Come to think of it," Cornelia picked up the ball next, "how do we merge with our elements? I mean, I've seen a lot of crazy magic since I became a guardian, but that's just nuts! I can merge with soil or stone, and move around in it more naturally than I skate around an ice rink. How do I breathe in there? Its not like the rock is moving out of the way… where does my body _go_?"

"Yeah!" Hay Lin didn't really seem to want to bug her haggard-looking doctor, but obviously didn't want to be the only one who didn't ask anything. "Why do we even have magic? Weren't we severed from the aurameres? Where did all these new powers come from?"

"Ladies, please!" Starder begged to get a word in edgewise, and Elyon, Matt, and Caleb all took the chance to laugh at his expense. It was always entertaining to see another victim of the W.I.T.C.H. five-girl blitz. "I think I can answer all your questions if you just give me a chance to talk about what I meant to explain to you all anyway. That is, I wanted to tell you all about these new bodies I built, at least as much as I've been able to discover myself, so far."

"Okay, so," Will smiled, "I'll repeat a question I had earlier: How can you not know what you yourself built? What are we now?"

"Madame," the doctor stood from his chair and bowed, "I am an expert, but I am not a miracle worker. I didn't literally create these bodies from the fabric of my imagination, but rather, I felt out the bodies that you needed, the shape that your redefined essence desired to take. And then, I cast a great deal of very complex magic to carve that shape out of pure elemental energy, and locked the spells in place with those limiter collars."

There was a pointed silence, with no one quite sure what to say to that.

"Did you say, 'pure elemental energy?'" Taranee asked, hesitant, not sure if she wanted an answer to her next question, but too spooked to ignore it. "I mean, are you saying we're _made of magic_ now?"

"Well, obviously," Starder smiled, exploiting his chance at revenge for the way they'd ganged up on him earlier, "after you attuned to the aurameres and burned limiter-free copies of their channeling matrices into your souls, it wouldn't have made any sense to rebuild you in bodies of flesh. Clearly, they'd just have dissolved all over again, and we'd be back where we started!"

There was another moment of silence, and then everyone started talking at the same time, mostly with speculation and angry, half-terrified questions about what the doctor meant. Elemental energies became riled, and they reached the brink of critical mass before someone took action.

"Okay, okay," Elyon stepped in to mediate, "everyone calm down. Professor, try that one more time, but using words and concepts a bunch of frightened teenagers will understand. I don't think my poor castle will survive an angry panic."

"Um," Starder surveyed the angry eyes staring at him, and smiled sheepishly. "Perhaps I did rush into that a bit. Let's take this step-by-step, shall we? What do you ladies remember about the time you took the aurameres to zenith?"

The tension cracked suddenly, and everyone went from angry to uncomfortable and uncertain all at once. The memory was just that troubling.

"Not much, actually," Will took up as spokeswoman, "it was an overpowering, mind-erasing experience, after all. We almost lost ourselves forever."

"Indeed," Starder reached behind his back, and when his hand came around again, he held a strange orb that wasn't there before. Everyone noticed, but no one stopped him to ask him where it came from. "The fact is, people from all over the cosmos have been using elemental energy as a tool since as far back as history goes."

The sphere in the doctor's hand projected a holographic image onto the air, a window into some sort of visual historical record.

"Some species have an innate ability to manipulate this energy," the orb displayed the tree-people of Zamballa, some sort of fish-people, and an animal that looked like its fur was decorated with dancing stripes of real lightning. "Sometimes wild magic, like the heart of a world, will give one power over elemental energy," the images changed to show a half-dozen glimmering jewels and glowing people of strange species. "And, as you all know, my people found a way to give elemental energy to anyone worthy of an auramere." The five familiar spheres with their symbols appeared in the air, and the girls felt a strange pang to see them again.

"Now, as long as people have used elemental energy, they've been aware of the danger of becoming lost in pure elemental ecstasy. There is a threshold level of power called the Drethek limit that is the maximum a material body can contain, after which point, the body dissolves, and an elemental is born."

The images displayed many of the people and creatures from before transforming into living statues made from their element. They all had wild, hedonistic smiles, and resembled mad, elemental caricatures of their former selves.

"Elemental existence is pure joy, such that it erases the mind and leaves nothing but a shell personality, devoted to enjoying its power and loving nothing more than spreading its own element as far as possible."

The images now showed elementals in all their terrible glory. A man of fire burned down a city, laughing and dancing amid the flames as buildings collapsed onto fleeing crowds. An earth elemental capriciously flattened a mountain, only to raise a new one a few miles to one side, carelessly breaking apart a continent. A water elemental pushed one tidal wave after another onto a flood-plain, competing with itself to see how far it could drive the high-water mark into the hills. A quintessence elemental and an air elemental danced through the sky, dueling playfully, and building up an electrical storm that soon ravaged one third of an entire planet, all at once.

"Gosh, that could have been us," Will fretted, expressing what they all felt. It had been an incredibly close thing. A hand came in from behind her to touch her gently on the shoulder. She looked over to find Elyon giving her a warm smile.

"We would never have let that happen," she promised, "and we brought you back, didn't we?"

"Yes, we'll get to just how incredible that is in a moment," the professor callously broke into their moment, getting a fresh set of angry glares. Ignoring that, he continued.

"Naturally-born elementals lead a wild, ultimately short life of careless destruction. The delight of their power eventually leads them to the power's source, the source of all elemental energy, a mysterious dimension known only as The Between. Every elemental I've ever heard of has, within a matter of days, grown too close to their connection with The Between, and obliterated themselves with an overload of power."

"Are you saying that if we hadn't been called back…" Taranee didn't have the heart to finish the statement.

"Well, you all seem to be a special case," Starder hemmed, obviously uncomfortable with speculation, "but probably, eventually, yeah. Although, since you all had the limiters in the aurameres inside you somewhere, it probably would have taken a lot longer than usual. Maybe hundreds of years."

A chill passed through them all. Nerissa had come _that_ close to victory.

"Well, those were some crap 'limiters,'" Cornelia broke the solemn mood. "They didn't stop us from overloading!"

"Hmm," Starder glowered, feeling the need to defend his nation's craftsmanship, "it's my understanding that you all willfully gave up your minds. Limiters work off the soul's desire to live on. There's no way to limit against altruistic self-sacrifice. You all reached right past the limiters and into The Between to touch the 'dragons.' You might as well have hit the off switch on the poor, overworked limiters."

"Erm…" Cornelia didn't have an immediate comeback for that, and the room was once again stunned to silence. Eventually she managed to mumble, "Should have put in a fail-safe, or something."

"Well, you know how it is," Starder grinned at her, "they try to make those things idiot-proof, but idiots are just so ingenious."

"Watch it, buster," Cornelia warned him, her eyes flashing with a vibrant green light, but her anger belied by a wide grin of her own.

"So, did you have a point to make in all of this, doctor?" it was Irma who brought them back to task this time, oddly enough. Everyone seemed a bit dazed now, trying to take in a great deal of information all at once. Matt and Caleb, who'd studiously avoided saying anything during this dazzling discussion of magic and their girlfriends' bodies, both seemed highly uncomfortable.

"Right, well, I'm just trying to say, you've got three kinds of element channels. Unstable channels occur in nature. They tend to explode if used as a power source, and turn people into elementals if they are overused by individuals. Then you have limited channels like the aurameres. There's an artificial upward limit on what they can channel to avoid the two problems of unstable channels, and they're pretty standard, safe tools. Then we have this third category, and I'm afraid I've only just invented it, and it's you guys."

"Us? We're a category of auramere now?" Hay Lin asked, furrowing her speckled brow. "So we could be used by beings of ancient wisdom to grant unsuspecting teenagers incredible superpowers?"

"Actually… that's a good question!" The doctor looked tempted to stop talking and think about that for a while, but a collection of glares made him think again.

"What I mean is, you all are something that was, as far as I know, only a theory until last night, when I was guided into stabilizing these new forms of yours. You're stable, unlimited elemental channels."

"Okay," Will chuckled, shaking her head to repel a swarm of confused thoughts, "I know I'm not a thamaturg-thingy like you, but that can't be right. I mean, isn't this a limiter right here?" She touched her choker, and all the other girls checked theirs by reflex too.

"Right! But it's not a Drethek limiter—it's not there to keep you from dissolving into pure elemental energy, because you're all way past that point now. The only function of that limiter is to anchor your minds to this world and give structure to your pure-energy bodies, staving off terminal ERE. These things never worked in the past—elementals have never before been stabilized. I mean, as far as I know. It was never even _theoretically_ possible until you five and your crazy, reckless misuse of the aurameres!"

"But _why_?" Hay Lin groaned, "What makes us so special? Why is this happening, doctor?"

"Right, well, like I said," his face glowed with his enthusiasm for discovery, "you've got channeling matrices burned onto your souls! I mean, never in my wildest imaginings could I have dreamed such a thing was possible!"

"Okay, there!" Irma stamped a foot, shooting a small geyser off into a corner by accident, "you said that thing again! I want you to explain that thing. Preferably with small sentences and visual aids!"

"Of course, no problem," Starder nodded, as though all she had to do was ask. He held out his orb again, and more holograms appeared on the air in front of him.

"This is an auramere," the auramere of quintessence appeared in all its glory, a small crystal ball with two opposed arches glowing inside it like a pared-down yin-yang symbol. "This is the channeling matrix," the symbol shifted to one side, "and this is the limiter," the sphere shifted to the other side. "This is a subject who wants to use elemental energy," a generic silhouette of a teenage girl appeared next to a new, whole auramere. "This is an auramere empowering a person," the auramere glowed, and then a perfect copy of it appeared on the human outline exactly where the heart would be. "Normally, that's all there is to it. Just a person using a magical tool. Not so much with you fine ladies."

"This," he became a bit more somber, "is an auramere user who's just busted the limiters and is heading for terminal ERE," the picture showed the ball around the auramere copy in the girl's heart shatter, leaving an unbound channeling matrix in her chest. She transformed into a living electrical cloud and then fizzled out of existence. "Here's where it all goes weird. I've never heard of anyone coming back from terminal ERE before, and however you managed it, it's the crux of this whole mess."

"_This_," he gave a flourish of the orb, "is an auramere user who has survived terminal ERE and come back to humanity," the picture reappeared, with the electric-girl returning to a human outline, and the shell recapturing the channeling matrix in her heart. Only this time, the bubble surrounded _two_ symbols for quintessence. "During the overload, the auramere literally singed a copy of its channeling matrix onto the girl's soul. This is now a special case of unstable matrix, and destined for another round of ERE when the overworked limiter breaks or, in your case, is carelessly removed. That's where I found you yesterday, moments away from a chain reaction ending in elemental ecstasy and oblivion."

"Good thing Matt hauled you in so quickly then, isn't it?" Irma's attempt to lighten the mood a little mostly failed. "So…" she changed the subject, "we've all got our own little auramere inside of us now, huh?" Irma smiled, and her scales sparkled. "It'll be interesting to have powers that we don't owe to those stuffy jerks in Candracar."

"Oh, it's not a 'little auramere,'" Starder chortled his glee at the situation, "Its some kind of super-matrix! These thing are channeling like nothing I've ever seen outside an ERE self-destruct sequence! All that, and they're _stable_ in my new, custom limiters! I could rewrite a whole textbook on what I've learned so far, and that's nothing compared to this next thing—the one that'll make you human when you tire of a pure-energy existence."

"Yeah," Cornelia growled, "about that. Why didn't you just make us back into our old human selves in the first place?"

"Are we some kind of experiment to you?" Taranee asked, sounding fragile, almost betrayed. She stared at the network of orange fissures glowing on her creamy, dark skin and glared up at him with the fiery pits of her eyes barely contained by her glasses.

"Would you give me a break?" Starder startled them with his levity, shocking them out of their suspicions. "Saving your lives broke entirely new ground in a theoretical field. Turning you back human, even on a temporary basis, is impossible by all conventional wisdom. I think I found a way, so just give me a little time! The difficult I can do right away, but the _impossible_, well, that can take a while."

"Alright everyone, I don't know about you, but I've heard more than I ever wanted to know," Will brought the interview to a close as she stood up and faced the professor. "Dr. Starder, I want to thank you for saving our lives. This whole episode with becoming elementals has been a disaster, and if you can give us our lives back, I know I, at least, will owe you more thanks than I can ever give."

"Ms. Vandom, you have nothing to worry about," he smiled his handsome smile, and offered his hand, which she shook quite graciously. "I'm certain my device will work, and I'll have you ladies back to your old bodies, with all their wonderful, and less-than-wonderful, biological functions in no time. After that, I just have to compose and submit my report to Candracar and you'll be right back home aga—"

A sudden beeping noise interrupted his assurances, and his face froze and drained of all color. Will was repelled by the transformation, and stumbled away until Taranee caught her. He froze like that for almost ten seconds, breaking out in a furious sweat, and then suddenly was moving in a blur.

"Oh crap! Not now! Not here!" His cryptic muttering did nothing but confuse his audience, and everyone hopped to their feet in surprise when he retrieved his special device and disappeared it behind his back, and then flung the small table aside, staring out the window with eyes strained by a terrible new fixation. He'd transformed immediately from a charmingly awkward academic to a hard-edged, near-desperate man.

"Professor?" Elyon was the first to get across the room, trying to follow his gaze out into the sky. "What's wrong? You look like you've just seen a ghost."

"Well… I'm sorry it had to come out like this…" he hedged with a weak smile, "but back on my home world, I'm not a free man. Actually, I'm not supposed to be allowed out of a special holding facility, much less off of Artria. I took this little research sabbatical in direct contravention of some pretty hefty laws." He winced as the sky sizzled with magical force-lines and the first, titanic gates began to take shape, everyone around him gaping at the awe-inducing sight blooming above them. "I guess they've been looking for me. I was so careful—I'm _positive_ they can't have tracked me! But… well… I don't know how… but they've come. They've come."

The first of a dozen great space ship-like craft appeared suddenly, sliding out of the great portal like a nail being driven through a board, coming to a sudden, impossible-looking stop. As its fellows appeared around it, the enormous, perfectly symmetrical, vaguely dagger-shaped behemoths took up an intricate formation in the skies over Elyon's capital city. As the space fold closed behind them, the flying flotilla was enough to blot out the sun.

**Next Chapter: Titan's Clash**

**Original Chapter 3 End-Note**

Hmm, so yeah, my crawling narrative pace and unnecessary depth of detail means the truly 'ass-kicking' scenes will have to wait. Still, I enjoyed the hell of this chapter, because I finally got to redesign the characters to my own whimsical standards. That was sort of my whole goal in the story, and you can be assured it won't be the last time it happens.


	4. Clash of Titans

**(Mostly) Original Chapter 4 Author Note**

Today we have sci-fi. I hope you like sci-fi, because I've got a lot of it. Still, after all that exposition, the action here should be quite welcome, I suspect.

**Dragon Sisters**

**Chapter 4: Titans' Clash**

**At Siph, Home World of the Dragon King, the Staging Ground**

"Are the wyrms ready?" asked Thorngrave, the huge man in his all-encompassing crimson armor. He was standing amid a knot of slightly smaller people in armor that looked much like his, only grey, as they worked furiously over magical charts and communication devices. The immediate answer came from an outsider, a woman wearing no armor, whose features were on open display.

"You shouldn't call them wyrms, Thorngrave," The Fang said, her voice husky with some grand amusement that only she could see. She wore a tight black top that constricted her unimpressive bust and left her chest and stomach exposed all the way down to her matching shorts. Her only decoration was the glowing red Heart of Siph dangling from a gilded chain around her neck. She might have been attractive at one time, but now her red hair was a scraggly mess that clumped around her shoulders, and her pale skin was absolutely etched through with livid pink scars. The scars went down her arms, traced cross-hatched patterns on her torso, danced down her legs to her bare feet, and competed for space on her narrow face. "I mean, really, Thorngrave, do you _wish_ to court the master's fury? He considers it quite an insult when his pets are named other than 'Dragons.'"

"They are not 'Dragons,' and I'll not call them such," Thorngrave huffed, not at all impressed by the mad glint in Fang's green eyes. The young woman was unhinged, and spent her life in a cage for the safety of everyone else in the Dragon King's army, an organization aptly named the 'Dragon Army.' Perhaps the only two people who were not terrified of her were General Thorngrave, and the Dragon King himself. "If the master feels he can dispense with my services, he is welcome to doom me to the fate of a geas-breaker. In the meantime, I will call a wyrm a wyrm, no matter whose dignity it offends. You forget, stripling, that I have seen a _true_ 'Dragon.' I fear offending _them_ far more than our king."

The Fang hissed her contempt, the inhuman action reinforcing her resemblance to a wild, mad animal. Behind them, far below the review platform, the army was just finishing its muster. The wyrms lay ready, each one a great, winged, reptilian behemoth. Their long necks and tails reached out from their huge bodies, all armored in scales of varying hues. These vast creatures had been misnamed dragons by people throughout the history of many worlds, and considering their unspeakable powers of destruction, it wasn't difficult to understand why. They were moody, eager for action, and were hassling their handlers and the other soldiers around them as well.

The main infantry was made up of skull-drones. These faceless, almost mindless, man-shaped creatures were made of pure magic encased in a metal and stone shell. They stood in innumerable rows as they waited without the capacity for impatience or boredom. Each one carried a black, three-foot rod in its right hand, and they were motionless as they waited for orders. Motionless, that is, until a stray wyrm tail or wing-tip whipped near them, when they would demonstrate unusual agility in scattering and ducking out of the way.

"Sir, the wyrms are ready and eager, and all the troops are assembled," one of the grey-armored men finally answered Thorngrave's first question. He nodded, taking a last moment to review his forces.

"Very well, signal the wyrms. They are to open the space folds immediately. Make certain the scry-wizards have impressed them with our correct destination. I will be most displeased if my troops are folded to the wrong world."

The soldier saluted and gave the signal, and soon enough, each wyrm gave a trumpeting roar and gnashed its teeth. In a line in front of the staging ground, a series of portals opened in sympathy, and they showed through a perfect, bright horizon in Meridian. Thorngrave waved a signal to the massed troops, and it was quickly passed on by his lieutenants. The army began to move out immediately. At another gesture, Thorngrave's command platform took off of its own accord and flew after them, his foot soldiers marching in perfect time below.

"Do stop mooning, Fang," Thorngrave sighed, when he noticed her morose expression. It always depressed her to leave the same world as the king, this having something to do with her strange obsession with the monstrous tyrant. "You'll be doing our master a great service today. If we can claim those new channels, his plans for all-conquest will finally resurrect from these centuries of torpor. There's certain to be a kind word in it for you. Maybe even a pat on the head."

"You know… you're right!" she admitted, brightening. With an idle gesture, she stretched out her arms, the casual movement making an incidental tap against one of the blue-armored men on the platform. The gentle touch hit him like a cannonball, and he went careening off the platform like he'd been shot from a slingshot, unable to scream because he was already snapped in half. Fang clicked her tongue, more concerned about the tiny cut that had appeared on her knuckle than the life she had just obliterated. Of course, a second later, the cut regenerated into a fresh, red scar, and she forgot the entire episode. "Yes, you're very right! I've decided, Thorngrave, that when I eradicate all life on all worlds everywhere so that Kingy and I can be alone for eternity, I'll give _you_ a running start before I hunt you down!"

"How generous," Thorngrave was completely dry and not just a little sarcastic.

"I know, I know," Fang preened, toying with the heart of Siph, "But you've earned it."

The General shrugged off her mad ramblings and stood assured that she would be functional for the mission. He silently cursed the fate that had made her the chosen of their world's Heart, and forced him to deal with her inane comic mischief. He much preferred her when she was in her raving, murderous, berserker mood. At least then she was predictable. He let the matter rest as he turned his thoughts to despoiling a virgin world and enslaving its inhabitants, especially the five element channels.

**At Heart Ship One, "Heartbreaker," Currently over Meridian**

"We've folded into Meridian airspace successfully, Admiral," said the young-looking female Artificer in the command chair of Heart Ship One. Her crew manned the stations around her, just barely visible in the peripheral of the image projected into the flag bridge, where the supreme commander of the fleet stood ready to marshal her troops.

"Very good, Captain," Admiral Straight told her, turning in her swiveling chair to nod at the screen. She was the oldest-looking Artificer in the room, appearing to be about thirty. At the same time, she had a bent to her expression and a set to her shoulders that made her look much older, and much, _much_ tougher. Her wavy brown hair peeked out from her uniform cap, her blue and grey uniform suit matching everyone else's, with the exception of the five elaborate rank-gems on her collar, proclaiming her high station. "Maintain formation. Build up a full scan of this area and have it on my screen, ASAP. I want to know where the targets are. Also, contact whatever the local authority might be. It would simplify matters to secure their cooperation. Elevate all ships to full battle-ready status. The Dragon Army could arrive at any moment, and I won't have my boys caught off guard."

The Captain saluted and closed the communicator, leaving the Admiral and her small staff to stare into the holographic-projection tank of the flag bridge. Already, the image of their fleet was being surrounded by a map of the local topography, with yellow lights representing energy signatures strong enough to be thinking, speaking organisms. A nearby city filled in like a yellow ocean, until the castle overlooking it was processed. Immediately the map was dominated by a huge green light, and five glaring, red crosshairs.

"Bingo, Ma'am," the Admiral's intelligence officer, a mousy-looking fellow with an air of genuine youth, exclaimed in triumph. "Those are our girls. That larger energy reading looks like a planetary Heart, although it's a little big, even for that. Maybe it's two or more in close proximity? In any case, we've found the objective."

"Indeed," the Admiral agreed, sounding cautious. "Scramble the marines. I want them ready for a full-scale ground assault. Before we try that, however, I want to see if we can resolve this quietly. I didn't pledge my oath to the Artria Navy to go around shooting up mud-huts on backwater planets. Do we have communications with the planet's authorities yet?"

"We're having trouble establishing contact," another of her junior aids informed her, as she read the report off her data terminal. "Too much of a technological gap. Communications has resorted to firing up the old telepathy-engine though, they're pretty sure they can get a hit with that."

"Admiral!" yet another aid looked up from his station with urgency in his every word and expression, "we've got foreign fold readings at Zero-Niner-Delta!" Faithfully, the map showed a line of angry red circles on the far side of the city from where the fleet was stationed. "Sensors predict 90 percent certainty that they were generated by wyrm's teeth!"

"_God Damn Hell_," the Admiral pounded a fist on her chair's data console. "So much for doing this politely. I want a full division of marines on the ground, _now_! Their orders are to secure the native population center for as long as it takes to get this done. Special Team Alpha is authorized to use the new capture equipment on the element channels; they're to assault that fortification. Deadly force is authorized but discouraged." One of her aids relayed those orders to the Marine Commander as she turned back to her tactical aid and fixed him with a level stare.

"Prepare for full-scale ship-to-wyrm combat. All weapons are hot, move in to provide close air support to the ground forces. And…" She hesitated at last, her crew around her understanding how rare that was and just how intense her internal conflict must have been. "And get Special Engineering on the line. Tell them to start warming up the Heartbreaker Cannon. May the Gods have mercy on us that we not have to use it."

**At Meridian Castle, Starder's Room**

"WHAT?" half the people in the room shouted in surprise after Starder expressed his intentions, and the other half were stunned speechless.

"I said—I've got to go," the doctor was unapologetic as he explained again, outwardly patient with only the slightest edge of nervous urgency. "I didn't escape from Artria and spend fifteen years kicking around the infinite worlds just to get caught now. Nothing and no one can make me risk getting tossed back in that prison they've got waiting for me."

"But… but what about _us_?" Cornelia was the first to connect the dots, as usual when something meant her being inconvenienced. "You can't just leave us like _this_!"

"I promise to keep working on my new device," Starder said, rushing around the room in a flurry, grabbing this and that odd-looking item he'd unpacked and shoving it behind his back. His hand came away empty every time, and when he did the trick while turned away from them, they could see that his hand was actually vanishing at the wrist as he shoved items through some kind of a portal. "I _promise_," he repeated, cutting off another wave of whining. "But I can't do it here. If I'm caught, they'll put me back in a box and try to turn everything I make into some kind of new weapon! I can't help _anyone_ like that—which means I have to GO!"

"Okay," Will asserted herself, quashing any further protest, "we understand. You get out of here, and if anyone asks about you, we haven't seen you. Just promise you'll get back to us soon. We all want our lives back, and we can't get them looking like _this_."

"I promise—and—" Starder was interrupted when Elyon and Taranee both leapt up in surprise. All attention moved to them as their eyes went slightly glassy and they gasped in unison.

"Are you two okay?" Irma, closest to both of them, shook one's shoulder with each hand. They snapped out of it quickly enough.

"Oh—this is bad!" Elyon managed to say before she promptly vanished in a flare of her power. All eyes turned to Taranee.

"We got a telepathic message… I think it was from those ships out there!" Taranee told them as she recovered from the strain on her mind. She looked dizzy, and Irma was holding her up as everyone waited with baited breath for her to continue. "They're not here for you, Professor, I'm not even sure they know you're here," Taranee finally managed to get out. "The message was confused—it started with an assurance of peace and began to ask about permission to search for 'elemental channels' in this area—and then it changed. There was some kind of warning about an enemy attack, and that they would be coordinating defenses. I… I guess Elyon went to check it out."

"What kind of an attack?" Caleb asked, instantly on edge. "Are _they_ attacking us? Is someone else? What direction is it coming from?"

"I—I—" Taranee bowed away from the older, much larger youth. The orange network on her skin flared and flickered with her speechless confusion.

"Leave her alone!" Cornelia caught her boyfriend by the collar and yanked him back, quite a feat while she was untransformed and so barely two thirds his size. "Can't you see she's afraid? How would you like it if alien warships beamed conflicting messages into _your_ brain?"

"Uh… sorry," he said, even as he looked like he was ready to go running off in five directions at once. He'd spent too long defending his home to have anything less than a dynamic reaction to news like what he'd heard. "But still, we've got to know details if we're going to defend ourselves! I bet the Queen went to see things for herself!"

"Umm… guys… I think our brainy-boy is broken," Hay Lin interrupted everyone, and they all looked back at her, and then over to Starder. His urgency had vanished, replaced by an intense, pensive expression, his eyes ticking back and forth. "Helloooo?" Hay Lin waved a hand in front of his face, and then hopped away with a peep of surprise when he turned suddenly and pulled a somewhat large box out of the portal behind his back.

"If they're not here for me, and they're talking about enemies, then we have BIG problems," he theorized absently as he hit the plain, featureless box in a few places, causing it to unfold mechanically into a small, rotating satellite dish and a sort of bowl. The bowl projected an image onto the air above it that was a 3D map of the castle, city, and countryside, and in moments it was populated by dots of various colors and sizes. Of particular note were a whole line of angry red circles.

"Gah—those portals, they're not Artrian space-folds!" Starder bent over the holo-image and started examining it from multiple directions and angles, as though he could divine more by getting a new perspective.

"From the west—got it!" Caleb turned to run out of the room and marshal the army and was halfway down the hall in moments.

"Oh God… Cornelia, could you get Mr. Eager Beaver back here?" Will sighed, "This is no time to be running off half-cocked."

"I'll be right back, you get the super-brain to start making sense," Cornelia agreed, merging into the floor in a fluid motion that looked as quick and effortless as falling backward into the stone.

"So yeah, about that," Irma came up behind a frantically nervous Starder and stood in a huff, arms crossed and ready to dispense with politeness, "Do you plan on letting us in on your little revelation, because this mysterious danger act of yours is getting old, fast."

"The only people the Navy would refer to as 'enemies,' are the forces of the Dragon King," Starder told them, sounding grave. "But there's absolutely no reason for _them_ to come here. It wouldn't make sense for a whole Artificer fleet to come here just for me, for that matter—not when one cadre of secret police could grab me with no fuss and a millionth of the cost. The only reason for an Artificer task force and the Dragon Army to both mobilize here, is that there's something they want, or that they want to deny the other. But _that_ doesn't make sense _either_! This is a non-treaty world, unprotected, specifically because there's nothing here that anyone _important_ could possibly want enough to bother invading!"

"Uh, I wouldn't let Elyon or Caleb hear you say that," Hay Lin suggested as she came up and leaned on Irma for support. The tension in the room was draining everyone's energy, and it focused now on Starder and Will, who'd stepped into leadership fluidly as this crisis broke open.

"Okay, enough of this!" Will decided to settle things by refocusing their priorities. "This Dragon King guy—he's your people's enemy, yeah? Bad news, I expect."

"He's a tyrant and a slave-taker," Starder confirmed as he watched red dots pour out of the red circles and the grey ovals representing the Artificer fleet turned to intercept. "His armies run on a kind of super-elemental magic that's easily a match for our magi-technology. We've been in a cold war with him for over eight thousand years, ever since the First War sputtered into stalemate."

"Okay, we've identified the _bad guys_," Will agreed, and everyone around her nodded. "I suppose we can assume these guys will attack the civilians in the city. We can't let that happen. What do you think those flying battleships will do?"

"They must have come here for the same thing as the Dragon King's minions," Starder speculated, terribly calm and focused now that he had someone directing his powerful mind out of its mad scramble. "They're liable to grab it and leave, but they'll fight to protect the civilians down here until they have no further reason to stay. My people are openly elitist and famously isolationist, but they aren't heartless, and we all know the fate of those taken by the Dragon King. At the same time, this is only their fight until they've completed their mission, whatever it is. The natives here will be on their own all too soon."

"They're not on their own as long as we guardians are here to protect them," Will stated, grim smile playing on her black lips.

"Uh, newsflash Will," Hay Lin cut in, "We're not guardians anymore! Will the transformation even work?"

"There's only one way to find out," Taranee, mostly recovered, stood up next to Will. "We've got to try it. Where's the Heart?"

"Um…" Will's hand went to her throat reflexively before she realized she wasn't wearing it. In fact, she hadn't had it since their trial in Candracar. Quite suddenly, she felt bare-naked. "I actually don't know! What happened to it?"

"Ah, you speak of that charming Meta-Heart?" Starder cut in before they could properly begin to panic, "That was found languishing on the ice beneath the scene of your near-fatal dematerialization. I believe it was returned to the elderly woman who was custodian of it before you, Ms. Vandom."

"Grandma!" Hay Lin supplied, though they all immediately knew of whom he spoke. "I asked about her earlier. Elyon said she went back to Earth to help keep up the hypnotic spell on our families!"

"Fantastic!" Irma groaned, "the Heart is a world away… and we _need_ the Heart to make folds!"

"Not to mention the fact that we're banned from earth right now," Will agreed, furious with herself for not noticing the Heart's absence sooner.

"Well, Elyon can make folds too—and so can anyone with a tonga tooth!" Taranee followed up on Irma's quip helpfully, ticking their options off on her fingers. "And hey, you've got a way to travel between worlds, don't you, Professor?"

"I have a portable Fold Projection Device," Starder nodded, "but for an FPD that size, you'd have to be willing to wait three hours for charge and calibration time. I suspect we have ten minutes before a full-scale war breaks out in the Queen's front yard."

"Right, so, Taranee," Will returned to leader-mode, "you try to get Elyon back here, mind-talk style. In the meantime, Professor, is there anything you can do to help us turn back the Dragon King's army? Do you have any idea why they're here? If we could just find out what they're after, we could probably negotiate!"

"Right—" Starder nodded, his eyes ticking back and forth as he thought about it. He was so focused, he didn't even flinch when a fully-stone Cornelia thudded in through the door with a struggling young soldier desperately trying to shake her off and march away. They bickered loudly for a while; up until they were interrupted by Professor Starder's resolute—

"Alright." Gen Starder had his arms crossed, and was looking at the floor. "Okay, I'll stick around. Mind you all, I'm no good in a fight—just the thought of hurting people, or even just the vile skull-drones of the Dragon Army, makes me woozy. Still, the Dragon King shows no mercy, and I'd be remiss in my pledge to aid others if I didn't do all I could." He reached behind his back and produced a handful of tiny metal bits that looked like toy spiders.

"So, I guess we should cover as many bases as possible. These are communication bugs, here," he said, pitching them out into the gathered listeners. The tiny things corrected their paths in mid-air and homed in on one person each, several of the girls shrieking as the little things crawled animatedly up their bodies and settled in their hair. When they settled down, he misread their dirty looks and tried to assure them with: "Don't worry, they'll integrate with your essences so you won't accidentally forget to dematerialize them when you element-merge."

"Guys," Starder nodded at Caleb and Matt, the latter having been nearly forgotten as he watched and waited from the corner, ready and willing to fall in behind Will's lead. "You two are going to need new armament. Nothing short of a planetary Heart or the equivalent is going to stand a chance in a fight between skull-drones and Artrian Marines."

"I think you'll be surprised what people on Meridian are capable of," Caleb stated, defiant, but with his interest captured my mention of armament.

"Doubtless I would, but determination and nobility are poor weapons against spell-cannons and boom-sticks." Starder looked grim, and he wasted no time reaching behind his back again. His hand came back with a three-foot long black rod with a bright red tip and a short, blue handle. It was vaguely like a baseball bat, only not quite so thick and more uniform.

"This is boom-stick, a special custom version of the enemy's favored weapon. You take it," he handed it to Caleb, who looked at it skeptically. "Point the red end at the enemy and will destruction upon them, and the boom-stick will make it happen. Squeeze the handle and—" Caleb squeezed it, by accident or design, and it burst into light, glowing furious neon blue as though it had been plucked right from a certain famous movie series. "Yes, good. That will happen. You'll find few things that can resist a good clubbing while the boom-stick is energized. But, becareful where you swing it."

"Excellent," Caleb admired the weapon's glow for a moment more. "Any other goodies back there I might be able to use? Granted one man with modern weapons won't be much against an army—but every little bit helps."

"Just this," Starder took something the size of a stopwatch and slipped it into Caleb's coat pocket. "Personal shield generator. It'll save your ass, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to dodge. Now get going. From the looks of things—" he glanced back over at this magi-tech map, "Queen Elyon is evacuating the civilians into the castle. You should go see if you can help organize that."

"I'll round up some soldiers and get right on it! Be careful everyone. Cornelia," he held up for one moment more and the two of them exchanged a nod. They were all too familiar with running off into danger for it to slow them down at this point. Then Caleb was running off again, this time with an actual clue and a hope in hell on his side.

"Okay, now for you," Starder turned to Matt, who looked unenthusiastic about being 'you.' "Can you transform into that burly form again? I have some equipment that better fits that size."

Matt regarded Starder skeptically, and glanced over to Will. She hesitated, and then nodded, and Matt nodded back. With a groan of discomfort, he burst with energy and grew immediately into the towering, powerful body of Shagon. Starder looked up about a foot and half to meet his glowing eyes, and reached behind his back with a satisfied expression.

With a grunt of effort, he pulled back, bringing out a weapon so large that he couldn't handle it all at once. He actually had to set one end on the floor and walk away from it until it fully emerged from his portal. It was obviously a cannon of some kind, its rotating barrels and hefty design making it look like the kind of weapon you'd strap on the back of a truck, or to the front of a tank-killing jet or helicopter.

"This is a 'Justice'-class heavy assault cannon." Starder made some inviting gestures until Matt moved over and hefted it gingerly into his arms. Immediately the automated systems activated, strapping around his waist and over his shoulder in a way that would make it much easier to shift around. "Its ammunition is beamed to it from those battleships out there—so you don't have to worry about that as long as you're on the same world as one of them. Just be careful not to point it at anything you don't want to obliterate and you should be fine."

"I hate to admit it," Matt said with Shagon's voice, "But this is _sweet_. I feel like I'm in a shooter-game!" He demonstrated his glee at this new toy by waving it in a wide arc, pretending to mow down a horde of zombies or some such cannon fodder. Irma managed to duck just in time, and Hay Lin hopped up into the air to avoid getting clobbered.

"Cool it, hotshot, that thing could cut this castle in half!" Starder chided him. Matt was left scratching at his luxurious black hair in sheepish embarrassment. "Anyway, here," he handed him a shield generator like the one he'd given Caleb and also a small, technological-looking stick the size of a pencil. "That's an IFF device, and its codes updated the moment those ships folded in. It will keep the robotic members of the Marines from giving you a second look—you'll look like just another friendly soldier to their sensors—but watch out for the officers. If any of them spot you, they'll know something's up, not that I believe they'll have time to grill you."

"Why do you have all this stuff?" Will asked, her earlier skepticism rearing its head anew. She'd been amply justified for her suspicion so far, considering all he was hiding, but now she was genuinely curious. This guy was a lot deeper than she'd imagined, with facets she'd never even begun to consider. "All these weapons and junk—you said you _hate_ fighting."

"And I do." Starder actually blushed. "But my younger sister is a weapons _nut_, as well as chief of development for the Navy's weapon's research center. She's a more typical example of my family, in that respect. When she helped me escape from the Isolation Center, _she's_ the one who packed my dimension-pocket, the place on the other end of this portal." He reached behind his back again, this time withdrawing a small cube. He held it out, and it projected the holographic image of a woman about his age in appearance with general features and a face-tattoo, or eylert, that looked strikingly similar to Gen's. "She happens to be a bit paranoid. She even packed that behemoth cannon along, even though it's useless without a supporting fleet-ship and someone or something big enough to use it. Of course, here I am, making perfect use of it. I guess paranoia wins out again—"

"Guys—I've got Elyon!" Taranee said, interrupting them. "She says the soldiers from those ships are going to guard the castle, but she had to agree to let them send some of their men in here to look for what they, and the other army, both came for. She's busy getting all the city people up behind the walls right now, she's not going to be able to come back and make a fold for us!"

"Fantastic," Cornelia huffed, "That leaves just the toad and his tonga tooth! Why the heck is that little cretin only around when he's _not_ wanted?"

"Irma and I will go find him," Hay Lin volunteered for them both, and Irma tried to protest as soon as she realized what had happened.

"Hey! I didn't say that! What help would I be anyway?"

"We're under attack! There's no time to argue, and you know some of Blunk's Meridian haunts, don't you?" Will supplied, and Irma knew that she was overruled. Hay Lin giggled, and Irma relented, but was determined to do this right, if she had to do it at all.

"Okay, I'm going," Irma began, "But how are we supposed to go raid the junkyard in this mess?" She didn't have to point at the map to have everyone glancing at the clouds of red emerging from the circles. "Besides, just knowing where he's likely to be isn't the same thing as finding him! We could be searching for hours!"

"I've got a plan," Hay Lin told her, "a good plan. I'll be able to use the wind to find him once we get close, and our noses should do the rest of the job just fine. Anyway, Irma, turn yourself into water."

"Why?" Irma was giving her a terribly suspicious look.

"Heloooo? I have plan here! This is going to work! I've… got a feeling. Heck, just turn into water and get ready to evaporate!" Hay Lin demanded, her tone explaining how silly she thought Irma was being. Her gently scaled face twisted in skepticism, Irma concentrated, going transparent as she became a being of shaped moisture. Almost as quickly, she started to bellow with steam and reduce.

Hay Lin spun in place, becoming a whirlwind that sucked in the steam, the white blur quickly transforming into a coherent grey puff of fog. The fog lifted off the ground, and the space was suddenly full of the sound of uncontrolled giggling and laughter.

"T-t-that tickles!" Irma's voice stammered past her laughter.

"Just-just hang on!" Hay Lin was also having trouble talking. Soon enough, the laughter slowed, and the fog condensed into a tiny cloud. The laughing stopped, and the cloud did a few experimental laps around the ceiling, everyone rapt with wonder at the transformation.

"Okay," it was Irma's voice that came clearly from the cloud. "This is about as freaky as anything that's ever happened to me, but it looks like it'll work. Let's go, Hay Lin."

"Here goes nothing," her voice responded from the cloud as well, and a burst of wind swept it toward the window and slammed through it. The cloud rocketed into the sky, and soon disappeared against the blue background.

"Wow… that was… wow!" Taranee gave words to the amazement everyone was just starting to get over. "Do… do you think we can all… _combine_ like that?" Cornelia and Will traded bewildered looks with her, and then they came back to the moment as Starder suddenly dashed back to the map he'd produced.

"The portals are closing—they must be ready to move!" he updated them as the circles all vanished, leaving behind neat rows of red dots with a handful of huge orange circles and a single brilliant diamond. "And there! The Navy has dropped its marine divisions!" he pointed over to the other side of the city as a cluster of tiny grey rectangles sprouted from the battleship formation and raced toward the castle.

"What should we do?" Matt asked. Taranee and Cornelia looked at Will, and Will glanced at them all, then to Starder, and realized they were all waiting for her choice.

"Matt, you go help set up defenses at the walls," Will decided quickly. "The rest of us will stay in one place while we wait for the Heart. Who knows? Maybe we can help those Artificers find whatever these armies have come here for."

Everyone nodded, and Matt shouldered his huge weapon aside to kneel down and give his relatively tiny little girlfriend a parting hug. He then shuffled awkwardly through the undersized door while maneuvering his massive cannon, leaving everyone else to look back at the scanning-map.

"The marines will be here within the minute," Starder commented, trying to ease the palpable tension, "and the fleet will be within weapons range of that army within five. I'll go ahead and zoom it in for that—wyrm-to-ship combat is really something else."

**At the Dragon Army 'Beachhead'**

Thorngrave watched a picture develop in the large crystal ball dominating the center of his command platform and pondered his options silently. Behind him, the last of his skull-drones finished forming up in their marching formations and stood at attentive discipline only possible from mindless magical slaves. The wyrms were not so accommodating, and actively snapped and growled with their impatience. They were more than semi-intelligent, and had been raised from birth to be depraved and bloodthirsty. Fortunately, the appearance of an entire Artificer fleet promised them something to sink their teeth into, even as it complicated this mission beyond anything he wanted, if not nearly as badly as he'd planned for.

"Fang," the maniac perked up at mention of her name, and her faced ticked with her shifting psychosis as she wavered in the broken place between her two preeminent insanities. "You will take four divisions of skull-drones and plow that city under. The Arties are going to get there first, no avoiding it, but if we can't lay first claim, we can certainly prevent them from extracting our prize until the wyrms and I have successfully eradicated their air support. Now go, quickly."

Fang snarled at him, her eyes gone feral, and leapt down the thirty feet to the ground like it was nothing, a sheaf of red light sprouting from the Heart of Siph to catch her like a silken safety net before she landed. Responding to her mental commands, a veritable lake of skull-drones shouldered their boom-sticks and took off after her, the lot of them dashing over the ground in a light-footed sprint that showed off their inhuman strength and unending endurance. They were covering rough, hilly terrain so quickly that they almost blurred.

Thorngrave frowned and dearly hoped that she would suffice. He had no fear of her survival or effectiveness, but even her spectacular aptitude for violence was limited to a single place at a time, and skull-drones were entirely insufficient support against Artie Marines. Their sheer numbers were enough to dig them out of that fortress, _eventually_, but time was a factor here.

More importantly than that, however, was the sight waiting for him in his crystal ball. The five element channels had split into two groups, and one was moving quickly away from both forces. That meant he absolutely had to win against the fleet, because he would only be able to track those two down if he could get the threat of the Artie warships off his flank. Only defeat in detail would ensure that, and such would require quite a performance from his wyrms.

In total firepower, the Arties were outmatched. He had fifteen full-sized wyrms, every one of which had the full-series of magical enhancements provided by the Dragon Army's expert enhancement wizards. The enemy had three battleships, five heavy cruisers, and seven destroyers. Allowing for the utterly different combat styles, that was only about two-thirds his own total firepower. There was really no reason he couldn't hurt them badly, possibly even drive them from the dimension entirely. Only… one of the battleships looked different than his memory and their profiles suggested. It was enough of an oddity to give him a moment's pause.

"Prepare to assault the enemy's fleet formation!" Thorngrave shouted to his underlings, and the grey-armored minions hurried to relay the orders. In all the history of his personally commanding battles, only a single Artie commander had even managed to hold him to stalemate in situations with equivalent forces. While it was entirely possible that his nemesis, Admiral Straight, was over there right now, it was a chance he was willing to take to secure a quick, complete victory. Besides, even _she_ couldn't manage to do more than hold him at bay in this situation.

**At the Artrian Marine Drop Ships**

Major Dennis Letran watched the native city rush up under his drop ship and was already planning where to deploy his troops to best defend those stone fortifications. Of course, the entire idea of trying to defend a fortress like that during battle using modern weapons was ludicrous—a boom-stick at maximum yield could knock one of those walls right over. On the other hand, there weren't any other solutions that could keep civilians out of the line of fire, and it wouldn't be too hard to reinforce the walls with portable energy shields. What concerned him far more than that was the dual-nature of their mission.

While his troops held back the tides of skull-drones even now sweeping up to the city's limits, a Special Forces squad outside of his command was going to be operating behind his secured lines to capture the objectives. They had full authority to use force in their pursuit, and that meant the people he was supposed to be defending might shortly have every reason in the world to attack him from behind. If ever there was a situation he'd hoped to avoid, it was having to put down helpless muck-dwelling primitives. He'd become an officer to defend the cosmos from the Dragon King, and other pursuits were entirely outside his tastes. Still, orders were orders.

"We're almost in position," the ship's pilot reported, using their communication bugs. Deciding there was no more time for worrying, he punched a long series of information into a console by his seat. In seconds, he'd outlined the pattern he wanted the ships to drop his troops in for their deployment. The flight of fat, ungainly transport ships split up at his command and followed the pattern, their engines flaring with enchanted blue flames as they boosted to their required destinations. Like clockwork, they spread into a wider formation and began to jettison pods down onto the steep slope that rose to the castle's vaulted walls.

"When the pods are down, the other ships will leave engagement range and wait for the extraction orders," Letran shouted. Then he glanced over to the Special Forces team he shared this modified drop ship with. Cool, unassuming eyes stared back, and he felt a chill to see such nerve under the circumstances. "This ship will set down inside the castle's walls and hold position. There's a… special mission for it to act in support of."

**At Heart Ship One, "Heartbreaker," Currently approaching the Dragon Army**

"Fifteen." Admiral Straight repeated the reported number of enemy wyrms and watched with straining eyes as their icons were highlighted on the display console. The lot of them were taking up a classic direct-assault formation and looked ready to charge right down her throat. While that was not a numerical superiority against her small but powerful fleet, it was still more than they'd be able to handle, and it was up to her and only her to tip the balance. "Alright… fifteen."

"Orders, Ma'am?" asked her wet-behind-the ears tactical aid, who was unable to hide his anxiety. Everyone in the room knew as well as her how badly they were outmatched, and only their fait in her reputation and their honor as soldiers in the Artrian Navy was keeping general panic under control.

"Bring the fleet formation up for full broadside. Alter course toward the city to keep the range open as long as possible, we'll use our range advantage to best effect. Once they close, prepare for a two-tiered defensive net. Our objective is not to defeat the enemy, but to deny him his prize. For that, we'll simply have to hold off the wyrms as long as possible and buy our people on the ground the time they need to do their jobs."

There was an audible sigh of resignation as those orders registered, and everyone realized just how bad their casualties were liable to be. Then again, no one shirked from duty, and having a plan actually seemed to calm the general restlessness. Admiral Straight's staff began to relay those orders in an efficient fury of activity, and their commander smiled as she watched them work. She had a few surprises in store for whoever was commanding those wyrms. And if all else failed, she could play her black trump and blow the whole world away, although her heart quivered at the thought.

**At the Walls of Elyon's Castle**

"Shore up those lines!" Caleb barked at his fellow guardsmen, "clear all this junk out of the way! We'll be defending this castle in a few minutes, these walls are a disgrace!"

All around him, people of all Meridan's many races and species scrambled to make ready, their hearts strengthened by such confident leadership, even as they were harrowed by the nebulous nature of the threat they faced. Their Queen and her guards had simply started shouting in the streets that an attack was coming, and even now a full half their defenders were occupied in getting every man, woman, and child up the winding road to the castle's front gates. In the distance, a column of refugees a mile long reached down the road, and the brilliant sight of their Queen flashed from placed to place over the city. She was furiously busy with the work of reuniting separated families, warning the few who'd yet to hear, and rescuing stragglers from being trampled or left behind.

"Caleb!" a voice came from the sky, and then Matt landed hard on the wall next to him. The smaller youth's eyes bulged at the size of the metal monstrosity in Matt's grip, but he didn't have time to be too shocked.

"Hey, man, how did things look from up there?" Caleb asked, trying in vain to see over the distant city to the forest beyond with nothing but his little telescope to help. He had no idea how long they had before these 'enemies' arrived, nor what they might look like. In the distance, he could just make out the shiny grey lengths of the flying battleship flotilla approaching the city's limits as they turned majestically and pointed their prows toward the castle.

"Not much better than they do from here," Matt admitted. His heart was heavy with worry for Will and the other guardians, but he managed to get over that with the certain knowledge that they were in less danger than him. Their new powers, while not of the same stellar durability and scope as their transformed guardian powers, still made them safer than most. And heck, it's not like the enemy were after them anymore than they were after anyone else out here.

"Right, well—whoa!" Caleb forgot what he was going to say as the ground shook beneath their feet. All eyes drew upward just in time to see a rain of huge, softly grey, pill-shaped objects raining down at them. There was a mild panic amid the refugees, but the soldiers kept them moving in an orderly manner as the ground shook with the force of dozens more impacts.

Caleb gripped the wall and Matt hopped into the air as they waited for the shaking to stop, and when they could look around again, they saw that the pods had described a perfect arc around the base of the wall with their landing sites. Almost before the dust had settled, the pods burst open and started to scramble with activity. Swarms of pony-sized, silver and grey insects began to crawl out of each and every one and went up the wall in a clattering of metal legs. Panic would have been impossible to quell this time, except Elyon showed up above the main gate and addressed her people with a voice like a bullhorn.

"Everyone, remain calm. These are our allies; they'll be manning the walls to help fend off the invasion. Please don't approach them or try to impede them. They will not harm anyone, but they might accidentally damage property. I am with you all, so please have faith."

There wasn't even time to cheer before she blasted off toward the city again, and now people calmed to a furious rush again as they watched their unexpected allies in fascination. The spider-like creatures were made of metal, and each one had an object on its back that a person from Earth would recognize as a sci-fi gun of some kind. The spiders quickly took up position on the walls, many of them up at the top, but even more of them clinging to the front of the wall itself and training their weapons downrange.

Once the spiders had cleared out, it was time for men the size of ogres wearing armor that gave them unbelievable bulk. Again, what struck Meridian's people as mystic would have impressed Earthlings as two-legged tanks, complete with long cannons on the shoulders and shorter ones on the forearms. There was no way to tell if these things were robotic, or piloted by men, but either way they took off from the pods on jetpacks and landed up on the walls in even spaced positions. One landed between Matt and Caleb, nearly knocking them both down with the impact, and immediately proceeded to ignore them both after only a cursory glance at Matt's huge weapon.

Finally, a huge vessel, vaguely resembling a giant white bird with blue flames under its fixed wings, swept down and landed squarely in the garden courtyard of the terrace above them. Matt and Caleb stared over that way in amazement as once again the comet-streak of the Queen rocketed overhead and went to meet it.

Up on the garden terrace where the former guardians had met only a short time before, the dropship settled onto the ground. Its huge belly flattened innumerable bushes and flowerbeds, but its blunt nose managed to avoid the central fountain, a fact for which Elyon was grateful as she came to rest beside it. She crossed her arms, staring up into the dark interior exposed by its huge, open side-hatch, and waited.

In a moment, a crowd of men and women in simple black jumpsuits piled out, many carrying equipment of unknown purpose as they came. They carefully ignored Elyon, conferring among themselves in conversational tones and setting up their equipment at a rushed but efficient pace. After about twenty seconds of that, Elyon lost her temper.

"Excuse me," she said pointedly, letting her power play around her body, "I am the Queen of this land and also the Heart of this world. I demand to speak with whoever is in command of this expedition!"

"Ah, yes," one non-descript looking Artificer stepped up to her immediately and saluted in proper military form. "You are the one our base ships were in contact with then? My name is Major Letran, I'll be directing the defensive efforts. This is Lieutenant Bird," he waved toward a woman behind him with her face buried in equipment, "she'll be in charge of unearthing the element channels and averting the disaster of allowing them into the Dragon Army's hands." He saw Elyon's skeptical look and continued, "If we can get control of the element channels ourselves, the Dragon Army will have no choice but to try and intercept us before we can escape to our home territory and reinforcements. They won't have time to bother you anymore. It's the best hope for all of us, I assure you. None of your people will be harmed by those under my command in the process of extracting them, I promise."

"Very well," Elyon shook off whatever terrible feeling was bugging her and turned back to the distant city. "I'm going to go and slow down the enemy advance. I have some resourceful friends in the castle that will definitely be able to help you search, I'm sure they'll meet you soon. Take care of my people, Major."

With that, Elyon was gone, vanished in a flash of light and a sonic backwash as she jetted out toward the advancing Dragon Army. A few moments later, Lt. Bird stood away from her equipment and tussled her short, black hair.

"Why did you say we wouldn't hurt anyone?" she asked, not angry or happy, but amused. "I'll not hesitate a moment to massacre the entire garrison if that's what the job requires."

"She didn't need to know that," the Major sneered in distaste at her bloodthirsty tone, wary of the secret-ops reputation for 'wet' work. "Anyway, the element channels are supposed to be people, like you and me. That means they can be reasoned with, and I expect you to try that before anything else, is that understood?"

"You can't order me around!" Lt. Bird snapped, and then caught sight of his deadly serious look. The Major was in command of a huge contingent of marines and defensive robots, and these would certainly follow _any_ order he'd care to issue, short of mutiny against a higher-ranking officer. Lt. Bird was _not_ a higher ranking officer, even if she wasn't under his command. "But of course, I'll take that _suggestion_ under advisement. Men, move out!"

The Major would have added a parting threat to keep her in line, but just then, the sky exploded on the horizon.

**At the Battle for Meridian Airspace**

Supremely confident and incapable of cowardice, the wyrms of General Thorngrave's expeditionary force charged directly into the teeth of Admiral Straight's exploratory fleet broadside armament. The instant they entered effective range, every gun in the enormous curtain of battle-steel spoke with the hot breath of an angry god.

The dagger-shaped war-craft were armed with rotating laser turrets on the top and bottom, and the largest of these now barked with blue fire, lancing out in brilliant fury that incinerated the air like lightning bolts, and just like lightning bolts, they caused a sound of thunder that rocked the land below. A spectacular weight of energy poured forth in that first barrage, and every last bit of it was directed at only two targets. The leading two wyrms in the enemy formation felt that press of deathly energy, and the outcome was simply beyond doubt.

At first the coherent blue beams simply struck up against an invisible wall before the great, reptilian beasts and dissipated harmlessly. If it had been only two or three, even these massive blasts would have been harmless tickling to the spell-shields that guard the wyrms. However, it was not in twos and threes that these beams struck, but two _dozen_, and rather than slowly peel away as they might in an extended engagement, the wyrms' shields _evaporated_. The reptilian beasts beyond were no match for such horrific energies, and in a brilliant instant that seemed to rock the very planet, the enemy force was reduced to thirteen.

Unperturbed, the wyrms flew on, huge heads on long necks twisting and lashing in fury at their losses as they strove desperately to get to grips with their enemies. As they entered their own maximum range, every single one of them charged energy in its throat, sending its mouth into a glow of color to match its individual scales. An instant later, as they tried to outrace the enemy's reloading turrets, they launched a volley of fire to answer the one they'd suffered.

Wyrm's breath was nothing special, when the creatures were in their natural state. After the tender attentions of the Dragon Army's enhancement wizards, it was the deadliest weapon in the known worlds short of weapons of mass destruction. Now it was aimed at Third Fleet, and it lashed forth like threads of pure force, curling from their lips in erratic arcs that nevertheless found homes against the enemy's own spell shields.

Perhaps the only true advantage possessed by the Artrian forces was their numerical superiority. The wyrms had many targets to choose from, and for all their intellect, they have never been well known for their cooperation. Had they concentrated fire, they might well have swept one of Straight's precious battleships right out of the sky. As it was, the fleet's interlocking, overlapping spell shields strained against wyrmfire, and gave away in only two places.

The first penetration allowed three gouts of searching, writhing force to wriggle through low on the wall's 'face,' and seek enemies like living serpents. The snakes found a gap that let them crawl upward and into the heavy cruiser Strife and downward into the destroyer Upton, and both suffered.

The heavy cruiser, which would just barely have rested its wide length inside the boundaries of two football fields set end to end, took the damage quite well. It only lost two turrets and part of an ammunition magazine as the beam of hot death wormed up from below and blasted a hole right through its center. The destroyer, which was barely half as long, if equally wide, was slashed neatly in two. Lifeboats rocketed out of it like beads pouring from a shattered cup, right up until secondary explosions smashed the remains to pieces and sent the wreckage tumbling to the earth below.

The second penetration was more distributed, dealing minor damage to two more heavy cruisers and another destroyer. Altogether, it was far, far less damage than the Artrian opening barrage, but the exchange rate would only worsen as the wyrms closed the gap. Even now, the second broadside from the fleet slew only one wyrm, a second staggering aside, wounded but still effective. The next wyrm attack gutted a heavy cruiser, evaporated two destroyers, and dealt minor damage to five other vessels, and now the two forces were too close to continue using their main armaments.

As they closed within spitting distance, the spell shields of both sides neutralized one another and both sides changed tactics to suit this entirely different type of combat. The fleet ships closed formation and fired their main guns only sparsely, the huge turrets unable to track the nimble wyrms at this close range. They fired hundreds of much smaller cannons and spell-lasers at the circling behemoths, filling the air with clouds of flack and needle-stacks of hot energy, picking away at their tough hides. The wyrms meanwhile had to cut back on their breath lest it accidentally seek their allies in uncontrolled death spasms, the weakened blasts barely penetrating the fleet's armor but still causing terrible damage. The battle became a grind of attrition, a grind that slowly built in the Dragon Army's favor as ship after ship was sent drifting broken toward the ground.

Still, the fleet gave as good as it received. Better, in fact, than the wyrms were expecting, with excellent fire coordination and perfect determination brining down one beast after another. It was only too late that they realized the reason for their own losses—the enemy formation.

Straight had arranged her ships in such a way that all strikes at the delectably attractive battleships would take attackers through the grinder of a shell of smaller ships, and in their fervor for the largest prizes, the wyrms had been wasting their strength. The battle quickly drew toward a stalemate, a bloody, burning stalemate, and dragged on unresolved long past any point either side was willing to accept. Still, neither could withdrawal, not so long as their ground forces were committed and the objective lay unclaimed.

The sky twinkled on with brilliant death, as on the ground below, the truly decisive battle was about to commence.

**At the Battle for Meridian Castle**

Fang's skull-drones approached the edge of the city and were caught by Elyon in the open field between the forest and the buildings. In a flash of power, the ground split open and disgorged a perfect wall of earth fifty feet tall and a mile long, stopping the advancing column in it tracks. Fang spotted the rival Heart mistress and chose to bide her time as the Queen rocketed away again to set up further obstacles. Instead of pursuing, she streaked up to the top of the wall in a single bound and signaled her skull drones to continue the advance.

In a symphony of synchronized, simultaneous motion, two rows of drones began to toss their compatriots into the air, launching them one at a time over the structure in a veritable barrage. The last few leapt over the ditch in front of the wall and scaled it at a slower pace as those on the other side formed back into columns. Fang, observing from the top of the wall, signaled them again to advance, and this time to do so in full combat mode.

Obedient to the last, the drones initiated the combat sequence, engaging their spell-cloning ability, the only thing that made the mindless infantry cannon-fodder even slightly worthwhile. Immediately, each and every soldier produced a shadowy, semi-solid clone. Then every soldier and its clone produced another copy. Then the four made eight, and the eight made sixteen. When the sixteen made thirty two, the force was suddenly so numerous that they blackened the fields outside the city. That was the limit of their replication power, but as the clones were destroyed, they would replace the losses. While the clones were unarmed, they could kill even an armored marine in hand-to-hand combat, and they provided the perfect screen to cover the boom-stick armed originals.

As that ocean of black and metal began to flow toward the castle, Elyon made another appearance, and now the lands and plants of Meridian themselves rose up to smite these invaders. The army was slowed as gargantuan vines smashed and strangled, but they could not be stopped, and boom-sticks blazed to life as they smashed past with energy blasts.

In the distance, shoulder-mounted cannons from the Artrian Marines began to speak with distinctive cracking that could be heard even over the thunder of the sky battle. Glowing white shells of explosive death arced in at extreme long-range all the way from the castle, and Fang put up a shield of crimson light with a simple gesture. The Heart of Siph had its power tested as the shells detonated in blazing fury against its shield, and Fang knew it would not last long, but it would get the majority of her forces too close for them to risk using those heavy cannons.

In minutes, the quick-footed skull drones and their shadows had infiltrated the streets of the city, and swept by the abandoned houses without interest as they sprinted for the target so high on its overlooking peek. They ran in perfect silence, skull-masked faces staring emotionlessly at the castle, and they cleared the city's far edge in another minute.

The next moment, they were out of the city and crossing the open killing field that had daunted countless invasions; the same field that had forced the rebels to resort to magical trickery for their invasion. At this point, there was nothing between them and the castle except a long hill and the steep, winding path of the narrow crag upon which the great castle had been perched. No sooner was this true, than did every weapon of the gathered Artrian Marines open fire, simulating the broadside of their naval ships in its concentrated deadliness, if not its relative scale.

Gatling cannons, machine rifles, grenade launchers, missile pods, beam projectors, and all manner of other magically-enhanced, cutting-edge weaponry created a magical and metallic storm that ripped through the air of the plains and then ripped into the amassed horde of cloned enemy forces. Instantly, the casualties were a staggering, horrifying disaster for the Dragon Army's ground force. Drones died by the dozen, they died by the score, swept away like dust from a wooden table in the withering hail of death.

And yet, the advance didn't stop. It barely even slowed, every ounce of impediment provided by the simple fact that they were dying almost as quickly as they were coming. Almost as quickly. The fact was that the skull drones ran right over their destroyed comrades and continued to come despite the losses, and they slowly gained ground. Even as they melted under the barrage, the fallen drones continued to replicate, as did those in the rear, the total number not determined by the number of functioning originals, but rather, by the remaining reserve of super-elemental energy in the battery of Thorngrave's command platform. The distant power supply was barely taxed by this rate of replication, and the battle was a simple stalemate of two nearly inexhaustible forces.

_Nearly_ inexhaustible. In a few minutes more, the front of the assault was within boom-stick range, and the incoming blasts of blue, teardrop-shaped force became paramount in the eyes of the defenders. A single strike from those blasts would easily eradicate several tons of stone wall, and so it fell to the shield generators to keep it at bay. Stored in the landing pods the marines had come in on, the generators were a finite resource, if still measured in hours.

Of course, far before those shields ran down, the crawling enemy lines would snake up the steep side of the castle's mountainous platform and reach the castle to engage the marines in close combat. If that were to happen, all was lost, and so they fought with every weapon in their arsenal to hold back that tide. The marines fought, the Queen directed the land to fight, and everyone else prayed to whatever power they cared to name.

The Fang, however, simply smiled. Waving her hands around the angry crimson Heart about her neck, she constructed a shield of energy around her body. Waving them again, she faded slowly from sight. It was her intent to break this creeping stalemate far more quickly than anyone might expect, and her insane confidence was perhaps quite justified by the mad plan that had formed in her cracked brain.

**At the Walls**

Elyon watched the steady advance of the enemy skull-drones, even despite the most horrifying storm of death she'd never conceived as possible in the wildest sci-fi film she'd ever seen, and hopelessness started to grip her heart. Even as the front elements where pounded to dust, the rear just kept multiplying and advancing, its fire coming in scattered but steady bursts that all the time threatened to break apart the last defense of her kingdom's capital. It was victory or death, according to every source she'd heard from, and she couldn't imagine victory in the face of such a relentless adversary.

Suddenly, a glint of power caught her eye, and she noticed a blur of red magic trickle through the perimeter formed by the shields, far, far ahead of the front of the enemy column. No one else seemed to see it, but some instinct told her that this was a monumentally dangerous attack. In a flash, she flew down from her high position and landed so hard it cracked the earth, the cloud of dust and shockwave knocking a single, haggard-looking woman from her invisibility glamour. The scarred creature was only vaguely feminine, but its gender was the last of Elyon's concern as she suddenly twirled to her feet in an acrobatic maneuver and lunged.

Elyon cast a wall by reflex and shrieked as the impact against it was harder than a battering ram. The shield shattered in a spray of blood and two gore-coated fists dug into her royal gown and lifted her from her feet so harshly that she had the air knocked out of her. Suddenly her eyes were filled with the sight of two mad, burning, knife-edged pits glaring back at her, and she peripherally noticed the gory mess of her adversary's fists knitting back into pink, angry scars.

"So you own this measly world's paltry Heart?" the question was cold and deathly empty, sending a chill through the parts of Elyon not numbed by panic. "I will butcher you, and the Heart of Siph will consume your powers like so many others. I hope you've made peace with your gods, meat."

The beast of a human drew back one claw-like hand to impale Elyon's chest or knock off her skull—exactly which, the girl couldn't quite anticipate. Fortunately, she wouldn't have to find out, because just then a teardrop-shaped blast of hot power came in over her shoulder and caught her opponent square in the face. The beastly woman was battered away like a twig caught in a tide, and Elyon had a moment to regain her wits as she glanced back to see Caleb waving from high on the wall. Everyone else was far too busy repelling the drones to spare a moment, but he'd had an eye out for her.

Unfortunately, the fiend was back on the attack in moments, half her face missing but on its way back with unbelievable speed. This time, Elyon was ready, casting several layers of wall, one after another, and lashing out with a few massive energy-bursts. The feral woman shrugged off her blasts with a red shield, and crushed her first wall with another blast of blood and gore from her arm. Whatever forces she was wielding, her body could not contain them, and was ripped to shreds every time she struck. Still, she healed as quickly as she was harmed, and seemed not to feel the agony of such horrendous wounds. In seconds she'd battered through each layer of wall, and Elyon was left to repel her with a simple burst of pure, continual magic power.

The inhuman foe raged against the force beam, shoving her backward, pushing into it, even as it stripped at her flesh. Another boom-stick burst came down from the wall, only to be deflected back up toward the castle to eradicate part of the inner wall. The monster of scars and blood advanced to just outside arms-reach, and Elyon felt the hand of death come down to snuff out her short life. A sweeping claw barely brushed across her cheek, leaving a stinging cut, and she could tell that the next swipe would certainly smash her face in like a hammer against overripe fruit.

Just then, Elyon felt a shift in the earth between her feet. With her fist halfway through the finishing blow, the feral Heart-mistress was punted like a rubber kick-ball, flashing off into the sky to be torn into tiny shreds by the withering firestorm still raging just above them. The blow had been delivered by a spike of earth leaping from the soil, and Elyon felt her eyes bulge as that spike turned around and smiled at her, tossing its crown of impossibly golden, silky, intricately braided grass. The hunk of solid stone added in a wink from a glowing green pit of an eye, and suddenly Elyon recognized her oldest, dearest friend.

Speechless, Elyon tumbled forward and hugged a stone-hard Cornelia. The girl had become a voluptuous young woman, the Queen couldn't help but notice as she nearly knocked her head on the unfamiliar endowments of the other girl's chest. That, along with the now-stone fairy leotard, and Elyon knew the guardians had somehow regained their transformation powers.

Even still, though, she was _different_. Her minute fairy wings seemed much bigger, and just as her hair had become a spill of yellow grass in neat and symmetrical braids, her wings had become broad leaves pulled from some gigantic rainforest tree. All the rest of her was shrouded in her stone transformation, but Elyon could tell that this was not the same creature she'd left standing in the castle with her other friends.

Cornelia pulled away, gave Elyon a mute smile and a gravel-rough peck on the forehead, and vanished into a cloud of sand. The Queen almost protested the sudden departure, until she was interrupted by a deafening noise. Or rather, it was a sudden, complete silence that was totally startling after the unreal thunder of so many guns. There was nothing left but a sound of wind, and in a way, it was more surprising than a fire-drill in a library.

Elyon looked up to see why the battle had stopped, and was left speechless.

**At a Hiding Place**

The silver-haired resident of The Between, coated in her glowing armor and skin sprinkled with glorious jewel-like scales, waited in detached curiosity as she watched history in the making. The Makers in their metal shells and the Consumers with their enchanted beasts bickered furiously on a world that neither had any claim upon. She sat in invisible, undetectable neutrality as she observed events unfolding around her, and smiled as she sensed the subtle changes that would soon become monumental.

Her sisters grew to maturity in an instant flash, passing from controllable whelps into something far, far greater. Whatever force had precipitated this impossible change, it was about to alter the balance of power in a way that both Makers and Consumers could never have dreamed, much less anticipated.

The watcher smiled. This was greater than she could have hoped, greater than she'd ever dreamed in all her long time dreaming in The Between. Today was the start of a new age. Today marked the rise of the true Dragon Kin.

**Next Chapter: Dragon Kin Part 1**


	5. Dragon Kin Part One

This chapter shifts around in time a great deal to show the same events happening from multiple perspectives. It's not that confusing, but I figured a heads-up was in order. "_What?_" You say? This is a whole extra chapter of dithering around before that dynamic action I promised? Yeah, but it's pretty entertaining, if you ask me, and its not like you have to wait on the cliffhanger, since I'm posting this all at once. Frankly, it would all be one chapter, but that would be stupid-long, so I'm breaking it up a tad.

**Dragon Sisters**

**Chapter 5: Dragon Kin**

**Part One**

**At Starder's Room, Meridian Castle**

"There, the shooting's begun," Starder said, zooming the image on his holographic projector until the individual ships and wyrms could be distinguished closing in on one another. Latticework spindles of light reached from the flying battleships' broadsides over to the wyrm formation, and a second later, there was a sound like grinding, rolling thunder just outside the walls. "Two wyrms down, but that's the last free shot they'll get. Oh, and here comes the return fire."

Sure enough, the wyrms fired back with their fell breath, and a few of the ships rocked with damage, and one relatively small destroyer cracked and blasted into two battered halves. Starder winced, but none of the other ships died, although many took damage. Numbers flashed in a low corner of the holographic image, along with words in a text none of the watching girls could read.

"Damn… the Upton just ate it," Starder was strained with a solemn hurt, despite his neutral tone. "There were a hundred men and women on that destroyer. Looks like the lifeboats launched… but still. Damage reports estimated at up to seventy dead across the fleet already. That number isn't going to get any smaller."

"Gah! I can't stand this waiting! We should be out there helping!" Cornelia was practically ready to start chewing her own knuckle off with sheer distraught nerves. "People are dying in battle while we're just standing around!"

"What do you think we could do out there right now?" Taranee, as usual, stepped in as the voice of caution and reason, "You'd have to have magic at least as strong as Elyon's to make the slightest difference in a fight like this. I'll agree we've got a new level of power," she looked down at her own hands, where orange fissures glowed with the fire barely contained by her skin, "but unless we have the Heart of Candracar to magnify it, we'd be less than useless in a fight like this. We're just going to have to wait for Irma and Hay Lin to get back."

"I know! That doesn't make this any easier!" Cornelia was shouting, frowning unattractively, and unconsciously tapping her foot, creating a rattling vibration in the stone floor that everyone else could feel. The flowers woven into her living golden hair curled and quivered, blushing with a deeper red color. Even in her fourteen-year-old body, she looked like some kind of pagan war goddess, ready to deal destruction with little restraint.

"Calm down and wait," Will said, and there was no question that it was an order and not a suggestion. "For now, we don't even know if getting the Heart back is going to make a difference."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Cornelia's nerves made her snappish, but the hard look Will tossed her turned her back on her heels. They were often at odds, but this was not a situation, nor a mood, where Cornelia wanted to test her patience.

"Well, in case you'd forgotten," Taranee hurried to break the tension, looking miserable, "we're not guardians anymore. What if Will asks the Heart for power and nothing happens?"

"I've got a better question," Will was grim, her skin's glow flickering gently, "these new auramers that make us like this, according to the Doc here, they're stronger than the originals. What if magnifying them isn't the very best idea?"

"You know, Will," Cornelia was a bit more thoughtful now, but still irritated, "you don't do cryptic half as well as The Oracle. How about you just come out and say what's bothering you?"

"Right, well," Will turned to study the flashing lights of the distant battle in the holo-projector, "the other night, Irma and I tried to transform to save Taranee. The Heart warned me off. Specifically, it made me feel like it was the last thing I'd ever do."

"So even if it works at all, it could _kill_ us?" Cornelia was staggered, and stumbled away to flop into a chair. She looked confused, and then she changed, becoming angrier than ever. "Hey, you!" she snapped, drawing Starder's attention away from the holo-projector, "What do you know about all this?"

"About the Heart of Candracar and the guardian transformation?" Starder answered, but it was obvious that his mind was elsewhere. Indeed, his eyes didn't see the world around them as he spoke. "I only know what I read in the historical archives. The governing body at the Center of Infinity used the Heart of Candracar to empower their chosen champions, who, at the time, were picked for their natural elemental affinity. The aurameres were gifted to the Council by my people as a symbol of inter-dimensional solidarity. They were meant to let the Council make anyone worthy into a stable elemental channel so she could serve as a guardian."

"Right," Cornelia rolled her eyes, "way to not be the least bit helpful. I'll be a tad more obvious: _will it work_? Is there danger in using it now?"

"As far as I know without studying it closely, it functions as a sort of booster." Starder was still distracted, and Cornelia looked ready to walk over and shake him by his shirt-scruff if he didn't get with the program. "It transfigures the subject's body into the peak of magic-channeling efficiency with a fantastically powerful age-control spell, and then magnifies the subject's ability to control that power so they can easily draw upon all that new energy."

"_But will it_—" Cornelia began to snap, only for Starder to cut her off.

"_How the hell should I know_?" he exploded, his calm, pleasant demeanor peeling away in a sudden burst of fury. Cornelia was terrorized to silence by his shout and the look in his eyes, suddenly remembering that he was a full-grown man and she was a small girl. "I mean," he withdrew as quickly as he'd blown up, but his tension was far more obvious now, "I barely looked at the thing for five seconds, and my research was all tangential." He took a deep, slow breath, and when he spoke again, he was back to being merely distant.

"I dislike speculating, but if you insist, I suppose I will oblige. The Heart _should_ still work, if you can convince it to help you at all without the council's blessing." The genius reached behind his back, retrieving another bizarre device from the portal and fiddling with it absent-mindedly. "At a _guess_, the warning Ms. Vandom got before came because, for a period of roughly four months or so, you all had _two_ element channels linked into your souls. Getting boosted in such a state would have likely been a messy affair involving tiny bits of teenage girl splashed all over the walls."

The girls all looked at one another, astonished beyond words. Cornelia, recovered from her shock and embarrassed to be intimidated by some poindexter, set her jaw and prepared to retaliate. Will punched her gently on the shoulder, glared her into submission, and gave Taranee a suggestive eye-signal. Taranee nodded, approaching the brooding scientist with only slight hesitation.

"Professor… is something wrong?" Another Artrian warship exploded in the holographic display, and Taranee immediately felt like an idiot for beginning that way. "I mean—"

"Yes, actually," the professor barely seemed to have heard her, but now he was talking solemnly, and his eyes saw the world again. "I've had the most terrible epiphany. I'm really starting to think that I've erred in a truly awful manner. It involves you ladies directly, so I suppose I had better tell you about it."

"_Great_," Will muttered, her glow fading as she was overpowered by the inevitability of it all. She sighed, and then spoke up, "All of this," she waved at the battle taking place in the holo-projector, "has something to do with us, doesn't it?"

"You are very perceptive," Starder complimented her. He had the strangest expression of nervous enjoyment on his face as he squeezed the device he'd been examining like it was a stress ball.

"What?" Cornelia looked to Taranee, got a shrug, and turned to the doctor with a fresh glare. "How could this possibly have anything to do with us? Those are armies from places I'd never heard of ten minutes ago. What do they want with us?"

"Element channels…?" Taranee whispered, starting to realize what she, herself had reported when the Artrian ships had contacted them via telepathy. "They're here looking for element channels. That's what they said—at least I think it's what they said. Since the accident, aren't we…? But how could they know, we've haven't even been changed for a full day yet!"

"Yes, that's what bothered me, at first," Starder agreed, "so it didn't occur to me right away, even when you mentioned the gist of their message. Then I realized, if they'd been searching all along, twelve hours is about how long it would take for your impressive new energy signatures to be detected, and for expeditionary forces to be scrambled with all possible haste."

"No way!" Cornelia looked ticked, half at the wait, and half at being the only one here who didn't get what was happening. "These are people who build aruameres. What do they want with us?"

"I'd like to know that myself," Will muttered, eyeing Starder skeptically. The strange vibe she'd had about the man from square one was panning out quite upsettingly.

"Ah," Doctor Gen Starder hesitated, and then nodded. "Recall that I said what you are is something new. 'Unlimited Elemental Channels,' is what you'd be called by Artificers. As far as I knew in an official sense, your case is unique in all of history. It occurs to me now, perhaps that's not quite true. There is a legend… well… really more of a rumor…"

"_Testing, testing, can anybody hear me_?" Shagon's voice, masking Matt's, came in to the network of their communication bugs, sounding in everyone's head like telepathy, only with an electronic hiss added in, like a poor telephone connection.

"Um, I can hear you," Will responded, first of the girls to recover from the surprise. "Err, how do I make it so he hears me?" She realized too late that she didn't have a clue.

"Putting your hand like this activates the outgoing line," Starder held his hand next to his ear like he was wearing an earthly earpiece-radio, rather than an almost invisible insect-shaped robot device. He didn't look at all upset to have been saved from telling his story.

"Right," Will made the gesture and repeated herself, instantly greeted by Matt's pleasant response.

"_Anyway_," he went on, "_it looks like the battle is starting in earnest out here. How are you guys doing? Have you been contacted by those Artificer-guys yet? We saw them land on the roof just a minute ago, right before Elyon went jetting off to run interference against that ground force_."

As soon as she heard this, Will felt a thrill of panic. Wasn't the doctor just saying that these armies were somehow supposed to be here to find them?

"Matt, this is urgent. Do you know where they are—" Will said, just in time for the door to blast in under the force of a black boot. Everyone spun to face the commotion, taken completely by surprise.

Immediately revealed was a woman with brown hair clipped down to her head like a boy's, a complex eylert decorating her pretty face. She was wearing a black suit of something that looked like rubber, and that clung to her muscles and curves in a most complementary fashion. Behind her were two men that could have been brothers dressed in much the same way, and the hall behind _them_ was lined with man-sized robots that all looked a bit like rejected Transformers characters, all squared corners and broad, heavy, humanoid builds.

"Everyone freeze!" the woman said, not at all pleasantly. The shock was so pristine in the room's inhabitants that they were already doing just that. "You three!" she pointed at the girls, so obviously more than human, "you're to come with me! Surrender now or face the consequences!"

"What?" Cornelia summed up the general feeling in the room, crossing her arms obstinately and giving the woman a dirty look. "What for? Who do you think you are, barging in here? Don't you know there's a battle going on? Isn't there some kind of evil drone-soldier you could be fighting right now?"

"Oh, got a mouthy one here, do we?" the female solider, certainly an Artrian Marine, placed one hand on the strange-looking, pistol-like weapon at her hip, and the two men behind her crossed their arms in a mime of Cornelia, their huge muscles bulging. "Get with the program, you little tart. The scale-butts are here for the element channels! That means _you_! _My_ mission is to get you first."

"And what does high command plan on doing with them after they've been secured from the Dragon King?" Starder asked. His expression was grim, and he held the device he'd been working on earlier hidden in his palm. "If I had any confidence at all that it would be something remotely humane, I might just let you take them."

"Who—Ah…" the woman found the speaker, wondering who could be so knowledgeable here, and then realized immediately who it was. With what he'd said and the eylert right there on his face, it was impossible to miss his identity. "Savant Starder, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Intel said you might still be hanging around here, they predicted a ninety-nine percent chance that you were the cause of this disaster. Not that you'll ever see a moment's punishment, as one of our 'precious savant resources,'" her contempt was extreme, "but you've probably managed to restart the First War. Congratulations, Professor, you've made the first new dragon kin in ten thousand years."

"Um, what's she talking about?" Will dared to turn to Starder for answers, despite the danger standing at the door. She found him frozen, his face creased by a terrible look of anguish. Apparently, his 'terrible epiphany' had just proven tragically accurate. "Seriously, what the heck is a dragon kin?"

"No one knows," Starder said, his expression hardening to a determined hostility. "It's been a deep, dark, state secret for millennia. The only whispers to make it out of the high command say that they were essentially the cause of the First War and the cornerstone of the Dragon King's power. It's now fairly clear that 'dragon kin,' is another way of saying 'unlimited elemental channel.'"

"If you know that," the female marine smirked nastily as her hand lingered near her firearm, "then you know what a disaster you've caused! This mess is exactly why your kind deserves to be locked up."

"Right, like just letting these girls dissolve into The Between was even an option!" Starder looked more disgusted than angry. "And hey, maybe if everything wasn't such a big state secret, I'd have had some clue that what I was doing could be dangerous!"

"Like it would have stopped you!" The woman seemed ready to spit. She looked at the doctor with genuine hate in her eyes.

"Okay, that's enough talking!" Cornelia interrupted, not particularly interested in this debate when there were invaders on their doorstep. "Just tell us if we kick these guys' butts or what? We're allies, right? What's the deal?"

"Wait—shouldn't we just go with them? If the Dragon King wants _us_, we can draw him away from Meridian." Taranee, never the first one to buck authority, pleaded the diplomatic course.

"Girls, I promise you, if you go with them, you'll never see your families again!" Starder was backing away to the far corner of the room, and the two male soldiers shuffled out to the flanks to prepare for violent action in response. "They'll put you in a box, study you to their satisfaction, and then either destroy you, or strap you into a power generator for the rest of eternity!"

"That's not—" the woman stammered, at last realizing that she'd let the situation get dangerously out of hand.

"Oh, you just _try_ and deny it!" Starder cut her off, then turned back to the girls. "In Artria, non-citizens have no rights. If you go with them, the difference from being captured by the Dragon King would be mostly academic. I really—"

"Enough!" the lady marine pulled her pistol as she came to one knee, leveling it in the blink of an eye and firing three times before a full second had gone by. Immediately, the three young 'dragon kin' were frozen inside purple force-fields that clung to them like a skin-tight layer of plastic. "You aren't going anywhere," she growled as she came back to her feet. "Boys, secure these packages for transport, slap that brainiac into submission, and then fire up the drop ship. At last word, the other elemental channels were heading west at high speed—"

The caustic soldier choked to silence as the force-fields around Will, Taranee, and Cornelia suddenly vanished. Before the girls themselves could properly realize that they'd been freed, the woman leveled her gun again and fired from the hip with a quick draw that an old-west gunslinger would have envied. She stared dumbfounded as the gun failed to do anything to impede the elementals, who were all now glowing with magic and looking decidedly unfriendly.

"You know what? Suddenly, I don't feel much like cooperating anymore," Taranee was the first to break the tense silence, and punctuated her sentiment by snapping her fingers. The marine dropped a weapon that was suddenly glowing cherry-red with heat. The soldier's shock then mutated to anger as her face creased into a scowl.

"Starder! You did this! How did you nullify that stasis field? Don't you know what will happen if these element channels are captured by the Dragon King? It'll be the end of the universe, and it'll be _your fault_!"

"First of all, never use a weapon on a savant when he's one of the people who helped to build it!" Starder shouted from the corner of the room he was now hiding in, his mysterious gadget glowing as it worked to nullify whatever the woman had done to the former guardians. "As for the Dragon King, that whole argument about the good of the many outweighing the good of the few never appealed to me! Sending five innocent children to an eternity of slavery isn't any more acceptable when we do it to save the universe than when the Dragon King does it to destroy the universe!"

"FINE!" The woman shrieked, "there's more than one way to subdue an elemental." She turned a dial on her belt, and the men behind her did the same. Just like that, they were all surrounded by a gentle blue glow. The robots behind them were glowing too, and blocked the doorway as the three soldiers started to stretch and flex their hands menacingly.

"Bring it on," Will said, holding both hands out in front of her with fingers that were glowing like cattle prods. To either side, Taranee and Cornelia also grew determined expressions and got ready to throw down. From where he was hiding in the corner, Starder began to shout something about 'bad idea,' far too late.

Everything happened at once, and much faster than the elementals were used to. All three soldiers moved so fast that they were barely visible, each one blurring across the room into close range and surprising the young women with brutal hand-to-hand attacks. Will barely had time to notice that her lightning bounced right off of the woman before the brunette marine threw a right-cross punch that spun her head around, then grappled around her neck and squeezed her into a painful headlock. Will's shock was enormous, not the least because she realized, about three seconds after being pinned, that the first, malicious punch hadn't hurt at all. Even as a guardian, that shot would have rattled her teeth and left a difficult-to-explain bruise, and the lack of pain caught her almost as completely off-guard as her opponent's speed, strength, and apparent immunity to her magic.

"Hands off, creep!" Cornelia shouted, struggling in a bear-hug from one of the two men. Several large stones pulled out of the wall were hammering on his back with absolutely no effect, and the blonde's serpentine, florally decorated hair was filling his face without seeming to bother him overmuch. She tried to kick and knee at his exposed stomach and groin, but her blows just bounced right off the blue light surrounding him.

A series of interrupted shrieks came from Will's other side, and she could just barely twist far enough to see the other huge man taking on Taranee. Obviously disdainful of being forced to fight with a girl-child, the muscle-bound soldier was slapping the dark young woman about with his open hand. The slaps came too fast to see, and each one spun Taranne around with its force, but left no mark on her delicate, creamy skin. Fire flared from the orange lines decorating her body, and while that side of the room was largely aflame now, the solider didn't seem bothered by the heat.

"Starder, help!" Will growled from the superhuman grip that held her in a headlock. She didn't breathe, and she had no blood, so she wasn't going to suffocate or black-out, but she simply couldn't budge the woman's superhuman strength, nor affect her even slightly with electricity.

"It's useless! Those high-output energy fields make them into battle tanks!" Starder shouted from his hiding place. "They'll never catch you without their stasis field projector, so just _run_!"

"What about you?" Taranee shouted, showing admirable concern for the doctor considering that she was currently pinned to a wall by an elbow over her throat, a man three times her size bearing down on her with a scowl.

"I can take care of myself—now go!" Starder said, although it was impossible to tell how much he meant that when he was hidden so well that they couldn't see him.

"You heard the man!" Will ended the debate, "Tunnel three! Go!"

In a flash and with an electric sizzle, Will disappeared from the woman's steel-cable grip and reappeared on the floor a few feet away. She turned before the marine could react and held up her palm, which blazed with a sudden, intense light that stabbed the eyes and washed all the color out of the room for a full two seconds. When the light cleared, the woman was holding her blinded eyes and cursing fluently, and Will was gone.

"Right—merge with the element!" Cornelia could have slapped herself for being so dense. It had never occurred to her to try and use powerful elemental magic without transforming into a guardian first. But of course, she had _different_ powers now, and she proved it by dissolving into a cloud of sand and pouring through her attacker's arms and onto the floor. On the stone, she reformed into a teenage statue and winked at her opponent before kicking one foot idly in his direction. A layer of flagstones obediently lifted him off the floor and plastered him to the ceiling. Before he could grunt in shock, much less struggle free, Cornelia fell back into the floor like she was sinking into a pool, vanishing.

"I hope you guys like it hot!" Taranee let go of all restraint, let go of her fear, and merged with fire. The result was like the detonation of a large bomb, everything in the room shattering and flying away from her with deadly speed and force as she lit up like the exhaust flame of an incinerator. There was a deafening roar, the windows blew out, and when the concussion wave cleared a half-second later, the room was ablaze, but Taranee was gone.

Immediately, one of the robots from outside forced its way through the narrow doorway and bathed the room in a blue spotlight that somehow doused all the flames it touched. The Artrian marines peeled themselves off the floor and ceiling and deactivated their force fields, obviously shocked and confused to have at least temporarily failed their mission. After spending a full minute trying to decide if the encounter could have gone any worse, Lieutenant Bird, the short-tempered female marine, shook off her worries by directing her frustration elsewhere.

"'Foolproof weapons system,' they said," she snorted, "'never fails to contain elemental entities,' they said." She kicked the stasis pistol across the scorched stone floor, highly aware that the ruined device cost as much as a naval drop ship. "Yeah, _right_. Riggs, see if the savant is still alive after that pyrotechnics show. Either way, he's coming with us now. Leroy, I want you to contact the fleet and tell them to pull the troops out. The objectives are on the wind, there's no point in defending this burg now."

The two men rushed to obey, when suddenly, the beginning of the land battle was announced outside by the deafening staccato detonations of heavy artillery rounds. There was a moment of deceptive calm as the first noise died away, and then the ears almost seemed to shut down in protest against the cacophony of warfare that erupted across the land like continuous, body-rattling thunder.

"Blast!" Lt. Bird swore, "the skull drones are already here! We're pinned into this filthy hovel for the duration!"

"Lieutenant!" the buff soldier named Riggs shouted from the corner, getting his commander's attention. He shoveled some scorched furniture out of the way, revealing an unharmed Gen Starder in all of his cowering glory. At first Bird couldn't tell what the fuss was about: she'd certainly be promoted for bringing in a rogue savant alive and still exploitable. Then, she realized that the man was perfectly motionless and entirely untouched by the violent, fiery explosion. Riggs reached down to haul the man up, only for his hands to pass right through the scientists' body, sending it into a frizz of static for a moment.

"Hologram," Riggs nodded, grim. Leroy made some unprintable observations about tricky savants and Lt. Bird felt her anger tempered by grudging admiration.

"Well, the psych profile said he was a coward, and he definitely knew we were coming." Bird approached the hologram and kicked through the debris until she found the tiny device he'd been holding earlier. He'd passed it off as a jamming device to cancel the stasis field, and hell, maybe it did that, too. Only, when she crushed it under her combat boot, the hologram vanished. "Clever. He could have bugged out with a short-range teleport before we even busted in on them, and left this remote-control hologram to keep us focused on the dragon kin."

"What now?" Riggs shouted, barely able to hear his commander's speculations over the sound of the battle.

"There's still a chance the dragon kin are on the premises. Fire up the scanners." Even after giving the order, Lt. Bird kept her hard eyes focused on the ground, scanning carefully through soot and cinders. "How did he know we were coming?" she muttered to herself.

"Ma'am, I think we have a problem," it was Leroy who spoke up, and Bird didn't bother to respond. "Ma'am, I don't know how we're supposed to get them into the containment unit on the drop ship without the stasis gun. I don't think it's possible."

"You're not paid to think, soldier," Lt. Bird reminded him, and smiled. She knelt down, picking a small, insect-like piece of metal off of the floor. She brought it up close to her eye and examined it as she smiled a very unpleasant smile. "Thinking is my department, and I say: if you can't bring the containment unit to the elementals, then you bring the elementals to the containment unit."

Leroy looked positively dumbfounded.

"Right, but how do we do that without the stasis gun?"

"_Shut up_, Leroy." Lt. Bird turned to her slightly less mentally-challenged associate. "Riggs?"

"I've got a reading down in the castle's sub-levels. There must be some kind of tunnel system down there."

"Fine, fine," Lt. Bird started out the door, her robots taking up formation around her, "We've got to go find the right bait. Then we'll see how long they're willing to stay in hiding."

**Meanwhile, Underground**

"Ah, nuts!" Will shouted, pulling at the area around her right ear in distress. Her new teleportation power had made her the first to arrive in the old resistance tunnels beneath Meridian Castle, and it had been a tense few minutes waiting for the others. Cornelia had shown up quickly enough, flowing sedately out of the uncut stone wall like she was almost reluctant to leave it, but it had taken Taranee some time to find an actual entrance, even blazing along through the air like a phoenix.

"What? What's wrong?" Cornelia asked.

"I lost my little communications-thingy," she complained, "It must have popped off when G.I. Jane had me in a headlock. Could one of you call Matt and tell him what happened?"

"Ug, those things?" Cornelia moaned, "why bother? Just have Taranee call him up on the brain-phone. You can handle it, right T?"

"Umm," she hesitated, and never got a chance to answer.

"Bad Idea," Professor Starder's voice came from the shadows, and they all turned to find him standing to one side, having appeared soundlessly from nowhere. "The battle is in full swing now. If someone drops a shatter bomb, or somebody's shields start resonating on the telepathic frequency, anyone using mind-speak is going to get her brain fried. Stick to the communication bugs, please."

"Professor?" Taranee was the first to recover from her shock, "you're alright! And… you're… _here_? I was afraid I'd toasted you on my way out. How did you get here so fast?"

"And how did you know where here _was_?" Cornelia added, "these are _secret_ tunnels!"

"I'm _not_ there," Starder assured them, "This is an illusion being piped into your perceptions by my connection to your limiter collars." He smirked, "I told you I wouldn't need a communications bug for your ladies. Anyway, all you need to know is that I got out fine, and I'm in the last place any marines will ever look for me. You ladies need to sit tight, at least until we have an idea who's going to win the battle."

"Right, that noise…" Will mused, "it's like an earthquake or something. How long do you think it's going to last?"

"It's pretty well stalemated," Starder answered. The illusion of him seemed distracted, as though he were looking over some panels or screens in front of him. "The fleet battle is as close a thing as I've ever seen, but the ground battle… that one is only a matter of time. The Dragon King has some brutally effective foot soldiers. Still, if the fleet can pull it off, they'll bomb the skull drones or drive off their energy source, so it's not like there isn't any hope."

"We should be out there helping!" Cornelia growled, "Where in the world are Hay Lin and Irma?"

"They vanished off the sensors a few minutes ago." Starder's hands moved around like he was adjusting the settings on an invisible console. "That means they've folded off of Meridian. I'll tell you the moment they reappear."

"Right," Will nodded, "but if the Doc can track us, that means everyone else can, too. We need to expect company from that lady with the attitude."

"Actually," the Professor said, "I'm tracking her right now, too. She's not making her way down toward you. In fact, it looks like she's moving toward the battlements. I doubt she's given up, so what would she be doing up there?"

"Wait…" Will paused, her neon hair flickering as her electric-pink eyes flared with light. "Matt and Caleb are on the battlements. They don't have any way to escape those goons!"

It took only a moment for everyone to catch up with Will's train of thought.

"I'll warn them!" Taranee said, putting her hand to her ear immediately.

"I'll try to slow them down," Starder offered, his hands moving over the unseen console with fresh urgency.

"I hope Hay Lin and Irma hurry," Cornelia muttered, fretting as she imagined her Caleb's pretty face getting bludgeoned to ruin by those Artrian thugs. Everyone silently echoed that sentiment. At the moment, the whole situation rode on their shoulders.

**Candracar**

"Um, thanks again for the help, Blunk," Irma waved back through the fold she and Hay Lin had just passed through, catching one last glimpse of the bug-eyed, garbage-eating toad-man who had been of such dubious aid to the guardians through their many adventures. He waved back, his tongue hanging out through his vacuous smile, and then the fold closed behind them, leaving them alone on the terraced entryway to the Fortress at the Center of Infinity. Irma's fake smile immediately became a cringe.

"Was he _really_ taking a bath in rancid pork fat?" Irma groaned, her scales and eyes flashing with a wave of blue light that extended all the way up and through the blue highlights in her brown hair.

"Don't get me started," Hay Lin was still wincing, the clinging stench of the garbage dump where they'd found the toad almost enough to prostrate her now that she was an avatar of pure air. The speckling of blue and grey freckles that decorated her powder-white skin shaded somewhat purple in her nausea. "He used to clean the grease traps at the Silver Dragon with his tongue!"

"Ewww!" Irma shuddered, but she was grinning. "Ah, he's a cute little slime ball, anyway. And the stench certainly helped you track him down faster."

"That's easy for you to say!" Hay Lin was gripping her nose, "I think that dump contaminated by air-body! I need to cleanse."

"Hay Lin!" Irma tried to remind her that they were on a schedule, but she dissolved into an invisible puff of wind and blew away before the water elemental could even finish shouting her name. "Well isn't that just—"

"What do you think _you're_ doing here?" an imperious voice interrupted Irma's muttered complaint. She turned to find a maddeningly familiar councilor stomping down Candracar's great entryway stairs, his long, elaborate beard sweeping behind him and his face darkened with a murderous scowl. "You're no longer a Guardian! Arriving in Candracar uninvited is a serious breach of protocol, and could be construed as a hostile invasion!"

"Hello, Tibor, good to see you too," Irma rolled her eyes at his 'greeting' and crossed her arms over her dull, brown, short-sleeved servant's dress.

If this was how they were welcomed here, then it was a good thing they hadn't gone straight to Earth to search for Yan Lin. Irma had remembered, at the very last moment, that they were banished from Earth until their powers had been defined to the Council's satisfaction. If coming here got them treated like invaders, going there would probably have landed them directly in a jail cell. It was Hay Lin, on the other hand, who'd thought to ask The Oracle to get the Heart of Candracar for them.

"How about you let _me_ tell _you_ about an 'invasion,'" Irma quipped, "and then _you_ can tell _me_ how you can help?"

"What are you talki—" he began to demand, but came up short as he got close and had a good look at her. "My goodness! Ms. Lair, what's happened to you?"

"Oh, this?" Irma was gratified by his shock, and ran her long, blue fingernails down an arm covered in soft, blue-green scales, creating a musical tinkling noise. "This is nothing, just a new look I'm trying out. Now, about the Dragon King and the Artificers brawling in the skies over Meridian…"

"_WHAT_?" Tibor nearly seemed to have a heart attack on the spot, forgetting her bizarre appearance immediately. "What are you speaking of? How do you even know those names?"

"Are you kidding me?" Irma's amusement was quickly turning to frustration, "just check it out for yourself! Heck, I expected you guys to know about it before I even _got_ here! I mean, isn't watching out for this stuff kind of like, I don't know, your _JOB_?"

Instead of answering that barb, Tibor immediately threw his hands up against the sky. A sort of window appeared, and within it was a scene from the battle for Meridian, a great storm of magic flickering between the fleet of huge flying craft and the half-dozen remaining dragon-creatures. Burning wreckage lit the forest beneath on fire, and in the distance, a wall of explosions and a cascade of laser-fire grew like a deadly garden at the foot of Meridian Castle.

"How…" the man moaned a despairing sound, "How could this have evaded our detection? The Great War… every treaty broken… this could be the end of everything!"

"Great! Now that we're on the same page…" Irma began, but Tibor was already storming away from her. He had a look of concentration on his face that said he was speaking telepathically, but that didn't stop Irma from trying to cut in. "Hey, you know, if you could just hook us up with the Heart of Candracar, we'd be more than happy to get back to Meridian and start kicking butt!"

"Begone!" Tibor snapped. He never stopped moving, and he was faster than you'd expect for an old man. "The Heart is a tool for the _Guardians_. If the _Guardians_ are going to intercede to save Meridian, the Council will have to expedite the debate."

"What debate?" Irma's eyes were goggling in total bewilderment. She and her friends were ready _right now_, and the battle could be lost at any moment. What the heck was going on here?

"The debate to decide who the new team of Guardians will be, of course," Tibor brushed the young woman aside, and this time Irma allowed it. In fact, she was so stunned that she came to a stumbling halt and slumped to a rough sitting position.

"_New_ guardians?" The implications of that statement were mind-boggling, and Irma floundered for several stunned moments as she tried to come to terms with it. Despite everything, somewhere deep inside, she'd always figured that if they survived at all, they'd have their old jobs back. Apparently, the Council hadn't even waited for news of their fate to begin choosing their replacements.

By the time Irma got her act together and stood up, Tibor had vanished into the complex halls of Candracar's palace. Her shock had transformed into righteous indignation during that little break, and she began to chase after him to find a target for the angry rant blazing in her brain. A gust of wind suddenly transformed into Hay Lin, and Irma was caught by her shoulders as the smaller girl materialized in front of her.

"Irma, the Council is trying to replace us with new guardians!" Hay Lin's belated news came out as a panicked shriek. Irma's rant was on a hair trigger, and almost spilled out at her friend, but she managed to bite it back at the last moment.

"Yeah, I know." The disgust in her voice could not be mistaken for anything else. "But, how did you hear about it?"

"Well," Hay Lin's distraught expression became half-tinged with a guilty smirk, "I kind of floated through the main council chamber while I was scouring all that junkyard stench off of my elemental body. I didn't think anyone could see me when I merged with the air, but The Oracle spotted me right away. I think he was about to call me out when something distracted him. Anyway, I zipped right back to find you."

"That must have been Tibor telling him about the mess back in Meridian," Irma guessed. "I can't believe they didn't know! And I definitely can't believe they're going to—"

"Young Ladies?" the two teenagers were startled out of their discussion when The Oracle himself sudden zipped around the nearest corner and confronted them. He was without his usual entourage and had a disconcerting look of distress on his usually peaceful features. "I understand we have you to thank for reporting the disaster in Meridian?"

"Well, if it isn't the conductor of this crazy train!" Irma's rant, still loaded and ready, finally found a viable target. "What the heck do you guys think you're doing, trying to replace us at a time like this? Do you really think a bunch of greenhorn guardians are going to be able to take on dragons and spaceships? We—"

"Please, Ms. Lair, I have only one question for you," The Oracle managed to silence her rant with an unfair dose of reasonable tone and friendly smile, leaving her miffed but quiet. "I need to know if you will be able to transform without the aurameres, or if I would need to get you reattached first."

"All we need is the Heart," Irma said, although she actually had no idea if that was true or not. However, from what she remembered of the doctor's confusing explanation, being reattached to the aurameres was a bad idea, so she had no hesitation in her response.

"Well, unfortunately," The Oracle was smiling in a much more normal, mischievous way now, "My authority to pass out Guardian powers and the Heart itself has been rescinded by the Council. I can't _give_ you the Heart."

"What?" Hay Lin frowned in confusion, "then why did you even—"

Irma slapped her upside the head to shut her up, and The Oracle somehow got an even wider smile.

"No, I can't give you the Heart, but I do have the authority to order the Heart's current overseer to visit her convalescing granddaughter. Yan Lin should be by in a moment."

"Grandma is here?" Hay Lin nearly shrieked in excitement. It made sense, what with the council in full swing, but it was still a great stroke of luck.

The Oracle's eyes, usually so creased by his smiles that they seemed closed, opened just wide enough for Irma to see a mischievous twinkle in them. Suddenly, she had a smirk to match his.

"These are dark times, and Ms. Lair, you're absolutely right about the inadvisability of changing Guardians in the middle of a battle. However, these council proceedings are mired in tradition and bureaucratic inertia, so who knows when we'll be able to mount a response of any kind? If only some enterprising young people would take the initiative and ride to Meridian's rescue… why, such heroines could be forgiven for practically any infraction they might commit in the process!"

"Nah, who would be crazy-reckless enough to do something like that?" Irma could hardly suppress a laugh.

"You're right, of course," The Oracle nodded, and the conspiracy was sealed with a wink. Hay Lin was only now catching on, and had to cover her mouth with her hands to keep from squealing in excitement. "Now, if you'll excuse me," The Oracle began to back away, "Tibor is informing the Council of recent developments. I must get back there before the resulting pandemonium complete distracts everyone from anything else that might be taking place in Candracar."

The Oracle turned and left, and passed Yan Lin coming the other way. The elderly Asian matron looked utterly confused, at least until her eyes fell on Hay Lin, at which point her expression lit up.

"Oh, my darling," she opened her arms, and Hay Lin obediently rushed up to wrap her in a hug. "I was so worried for you, I though I might just keel over and die when I saw you begin to dissolve in the council chamber yesterday!"

Yan Lin gave her granddaughter a kiss, then pulled away, startled by the texture of her skin, and then startled again by the new appearance she was just now noticing.

"Goodness, what's happened to you?" She asked, turning Hay Lin's face around with a busy hand to see it from every angle.

"Oh, its just a side effect of my new powers," Hay Lin said, and shocked her grandmother into a little shout as she suddenly dissolved into wind and then reappeared on her other side, wrapping around Yan Lin's neck from behind and hanging feather-light on her back in a reversed hug. "I'm the wind!"

"So I see?" Yan Lin wondered, but she was smiling. Nothing could diminish her joy at finding her grandchild alive and well after the scare she'd had. "But how will we ever explain that to your parents?"

"Ah, our doctor is working on that," Irma cut in. "We should be back to our regular, boring old teenage bodies in no time."

"Good, good," Yan Lin nodded, taking in Irma's changed appearance with fresh surprise. "And so, what are you two doing here in Candracar by yourselves? Not that I'm unhappy to see you, but…"

"Oh, well," Irma fielded this lie, "the doctor felt it would be a good idea for us to stretch out these new bodies a bit, so he had us run his first report here to The Oracle. The other girls got caught up in a game of magic tag, so they were a bit too distracted to volunteer."

"Right…" Yan Lin frowned, but suspected nothing, even if she caught a hint of untruth. "Well, I'm glad The Oracle told me you were here, but I'm afraid this is a busy time." Irma watched her face, saw the signs of her internal struggle, and spotted exactly the moment when she decided _not_ to tell them about the debate over who the new guardians would be. "Perhaps you should get back to Meridian?"

"Yeah, I guess," Irma agreed, giving Hay Lin a little eye-signal to get her prepared, "do you think you could open the fold for us? The doctor was only able to send us here on a one-way ticket."

"I suppose I can manage that," the elderly woman nodded, pulling the Heart of Candracar out from under her robe and over her head to hold it by its chain in one hand. "I was never very good at using it, of course, that was always Nerissa's bit, but I can manage a simple fold to Meridian Castle. Here." She winced in concentration, and a fold opened. A sound of constant thunder immediately pressed out, the battle going in full swing on the other side. "Oh my, what's that?" Yan Lin asked.

Irma nodded at Hay Lin while the noise was distracting her grandmother, and the petite air elemental sent a sudden rush of wind blasting down the corridor. Yan Lin peeped out a startled sound and lost her balance, tumbling forward into Irma. Irma bumped her hand far more than necessary as she caught her, jerking the Heart of Candracar from her fingers and onto the tile floor, making a loud clang. Before the sound died, a trickle of water emerged from under Irma's skirt and pooled beneath the Heart, then jetted upward, launching the small jewel into the air. Hay Lin caught it while Irma levered Yan Lin back to her feet, then dropped it discreetly into Irma's hands as she stepped away with both palms up and open behind her back.

"Wow, what was that?" Irma said, too quickly to be casual. "Anyway, see you later!" She hopped through the portal, leaving a bewildered grandparent searching the floor for the Heart of Candracar.

"Grandma, I'm so sorry," Hay Lin pleaded from a safe distance as Yan Lin glanced around, "I promise it was for a good cause." Her beloved Grandmother looked up with confusion in her eyes, and it nearly broke her heart. "Don't forget to report it right away so they don't think you helped us take it!"

Before Yan Lin could ask what she was talking about, Hay Lin followed Irma through the fold, which closed precipitously behind her.

"Take what?" Yan Lin wondered, "and where did that Heart… go…?" She had about five seconds of doubt before it came to her. "They took the Heart!"

**Meridian Castle**

Irma and Hay Lin had barely recovered from their trip through the fold when Will, Cornelia, and Taranee suddenly appeared and subsequently collapsed in a heap next to them. They were all in the castle's abandoned great hall, Elyon's empty throne poised amid huge windows that looked out on the calm side of the fortress. The sound of the battle thundered louder than ever, shaking dust from the rafters and rattling the glass.

"Um, hey guys," Hay Lin said, waiting for the others to pull themselves together, "What's up?"

"We're up," Will said, looking thoroughly exhausted. "For future note: I can carry people along when I teleport… but it ain't easy!"

"I'm not super-enthusiastic about trying that again, either," Taranee agreed.

"What's going on? We were just about to come find you," Irma looked at her friends with concern. Their sudden arrival couldn't mean anything good. "And what's, 'we're up' supposed to mean?"

"I mean, we're what everyone here is after!" Will snapped, irritable after her exertions. Taranee continued the explanation while their leader caught her breath.

"Apparently, these new bodies of ours are like some kind of super-rare power source. If this 'Dragon King' guy gets his hands on us, he's going to use us as living batteries for his doomsday weapons!"

"What?" Hay Lin began to puff into wind with sudden anxiety.

"Yeah, and the other guys aren't taking any chances either," Cornelia went on, "some Artificer thugs just tried to jump us right here in the castle! If the Doc hadn't warned us, we might have walked right along into _their_ prisons."

"So what are supposed to do now?" Irma asked, her head spinning. "Who's side are we on?"

"We're on Meridian's side, _Elyon's_ side, obviously," Cornelia said, and her expression held no room for argument. She got a chorus of nods from the other girls. None of them wanted to see their home-away-from-home consumed by these power-grubbing armies.

"Did you bring the Heart?" Will asked, hopefully.

"Of course! I mean, it's not like there was ever any doubt, with me on the job." Irma smirked and preened as she let the little jewel fall out of her hand and dangle on its chain. "But I've got to warn you, this thing is hot property at the moment."

"Oh great, what did you two get us into now?" Taranee groaned, imagining the terror of that full Council tribunal repeated with new, more serious charges.

"Well, _technically_ we stole the Heart," Hay Lin said, getting various looks of shock and confusion from her friends. "They were already in the process of selecting a new team of guardians when we got there, and weren't exactly willing to part with it."

"_New guardians_?" the three who'd stayed behind all shouted at once.

"Yeah," Irma hefted the Heart up and glared at it as she went on, "so we didn't have much of a choice. Of course, The Oracle gave us the go-ahead with a wink and a nod, or we'd never have risked it. Apparently, if we save the day here, the theft will be 'overlooked.'" Everyone calmed down at that news, and Will held out her hand.

"Then I guess there's no time to lose," their red-headed leader said, and accepted the Heart of Candracar from Irma.

The moment she held it, Will knew she could still call upon its power. Without even a prompting on her part, the Heart began to levitate, leaving slack in its chain, a tingle of energy running up into the young woman's chest as the Heart greeted her. She imagined their guardian transformations, and there was none of the terror that had held her back on the night their powers had gone wild.

"Guardians, Unite!" Will said.

Nothing happened.

Everyone glanced around at everyone else, a wave of sudden tingling horror sweeping through the five friends. It was Taranee who kept her head.

"Uh, Will, we're not guardians anymore." The creamy-skinned girl quirked her head in exasperation, and the single long braid she cultivated on the side of her otherwise short hair rattled in sympathy.

"_Right_," Will almost smacked herself in the forehead. "In that case, let's try this…" Will took the Heart between her fluorescent-white hands, and held it to her chest above her own heart, closing her eyes. "Heart of Cancracar, please transform us so that we have the power to protect our friends!"

"Not exactly catchy as far as magic words go," Irma muttered, and got a dirty look and a gentle elbow in the ribs from Hay Lin.

"Who cares, as long as it works?" Cornelia added her little aside, sounding distinctly nervous.

As though to answer their doubts, Will extended her hands out and opened her palms in an offering gesture, allowing the Heart to show off its brilliant glow as it levitated out of her grasp. It floated freely for a moment, mesmerizing all of them, and then vented five multicolored wisps of light into a high-speed spiral. The wisps didn't go for the girls immediately as they usually did, but continued to orbit one another so quickly that they seemed to form a solid ring of light in the air. The ring rose and expanded for several seconds before the five lights suddenly stopped dead above their respective elementals, then flashed down to empower them…

**Artrian Flagship "**_**Heartbreaker**_**"**

"Emergency!" the intelligence officer shouted, overcoming the general noise of combat and the controlled chaos of the flag bridge. "There's been a massive energy spike in the vicinity of the native fortress!" He pointed to the holo-tank, which displayed an angry violet blob where Meridian Castle had once been. "Readings indicate that it's a class FIVE!"

"_Class five_? Are you _crazy_?" the tactical officer looked up from his console to stare his disbelief at the intel officer. "An open window to The Between wouldn't be a class five! It must be a sensor malfunction!"

"I'm telling you—" The man began to defend his sensors when the ship was rocked by a wave of momentary systems failures, with all the flickering lights and console static that entails. "Damn! That was a dimensional ripple!"

"Holy hell!" the tactical officer muttered. Such an event accompanied only the largest and most spectacular magical occurrences.

"I think we accept Mr. Jeffries' report at face value," Admiral Straight said from her command chair. A look of pained consideration passed over her features, and she began issuing new orders. "Close formation! Drive the wyrms out of our defensive envelope!"

"But Admiral—if we close formation, they'll just mop us up with their long-range breath-attacks!" The tactical officer very carefully avoided making that reminder into a protest, and so only got a mild glare from his commander.

"I think I know what I'm doing, Mr. Legel," the Admiral shifted in her command chair, looking distant and miserable. "I'm ordering a general withdraw. All ships, shift full power to shields and climb to maximum sub-orbital altitude. Ms. Stall, what's the status of the Heartbreaker Cannon?"

A collective gasp went through the flag-bridge. Over in a relatively tiny nook, a non-descript female technician with short brown hair answered her Admiral with a steady voice.

"The cannon is charged and ready. It may take several minutes to achieve target lock, however."

"Do it," Admiral Straight said, voice grim.

"Admiral, what about my men?" Temral, the Marine Brigadier General asked from his corner of the bridge.

"You've got until the cannon is ready to extract them, and I've got a feeling you'll have plenty of cover to manage it with." Admiral Straight's eyes twinkled with a strange mixture of misery and glee, "But if they're not out by then, too bad. This situation is officially out of our hands. I have orders to use the Heartbreaker if there's any doubt at all, and I'm not going to be the Admiral who was in charge when the Dragon King captured everything he'll ever need to make us all his slaves!"

**General Thorngrave's Command Platform**

"What do you mean a class five energy reading 'just appeared?'" General Thorngrave, resplendent in his all-encompassing crimson plate mail, interrogated his scry-wizard at arm's length as he held the man by his grey robe.

"Sir," another scry-wizard on the platform interrupted him with some reluctance, "The Artrian flotilla is withdrawing. Our wyrms will be squeezed out of close-engagement range at any moment."

Thorngrave let out a subtle growl, and dropped the man he was assaulting to look out over the forest treetops at the aerial battle raging overhead. The woods all around him were ablaze, strewn with the gutted wreckage of Artrian warships and his own broken wyrms. As he watched, the various dagger-shaped craft all turned the same direction in their lumbering manner, closing up formation and moving away from his forces.

"Straight, I know it's you commanding those ships," the Dragon King's chief soldier muttered to himself, "why are you withdrawing before the battle is decided? What do you know that I don't?"

"Shall I order the wyrms to pursue?" Thorngrave's second-in-command asked, "with their formation closed for retreat, we have an excellent chance to cause long-range casualties. We may even destroy their remaining force."

"No, ignore them," Thorngrave made his decision without hesitating, "if Straight is willing to abandon the field, we have no choice but to make for our prize. Send all remaining wyrms to support the ground assault. I want to _own_ this little hovel of a world so we can take it apart until those unlimited channels show up. Give me a status report on our objectives?"

"Two of them left the dimension momentarily," the scry-wizard that had just barely survived Thorngrave's wrath replied, "but they've since returned. Sir, I was trying to tell you, their readings have been completely drowned out by this new, class five energy—"

"_It can't be a class five_!" Thorngrave shouted again, his anger edged with a memory of fear, "Only full-grown dragon kin have that kind of power! The channels we came to claim are newborns, they won't be that strong for _centuries_—"

Thorngrave found himself interrupted, not by a sound, but by a sudden, chilling silence. The distant thunder of guns had stopped.

**On Meridian Castle's Battlements**

The job of a staff officer once a battle is in full swing is not a terribly active one, especially for a seventy-five percent automated army like the force Major Letran now led. Once his units were deployed, he really didn't have much to do but sit back and watch the tactical displays that his command staff had brought along. In a different sort of battle, he might have to order redeployment, assign reinforcements, or make other macro-level decisions, but not today. This was a slug-fest of the least interesting variety, and the calm, experienced officer was left with little to do but worry. It was unfortunate, then, that his worries were manifold.

"Are you trying to tell me," he growled at Lt. Bird, "that, not only did you fail to negotiate the element channels into our custody, but you also bungled their forcible capture?"

"I wouldn't say 'bungle,'" the sleek, taught form of Lt. Bird answered without looking up from the device she held. "Savant Starder was there, and poisoned any effort to reason with them. He also neutralized our stasis projector."

"Fantastic," Letran could only wince at the huge cost of procuring another stasis gun, "mission failed. We might as well pull out before those skull-drones tear down our force fields."

"Wait, I have another plan," Lt. Bird assured him, tracking something with the device she held. Letran, the castle's defenses safe in the hands of his captains and lieutenants, followed the special-ops spook as she moved off the garden terrace where he'd set up base and down onto the main battlements. "There!" she eventually shouted, grinning cruelly, and pointed at a young man in a long trench coat who was firing a boom-stick, of all things, down into the skull drones below. "That's a comrade of those element channels. What do you want to bet they'd be willing to trade their freedom for his life?"

"Are you seriously about to take one of our allies hostage in the middle of a battle?" Letran couldn't keep the contempt out of his voice.

"Watch me," Lt. Bird advanced on the young man casually, hardly stumbling as the castle shook from a boom-stick blast that slipped through the shields. Letran continued to follow, debating whether or not to let her work and possibly salvage the mission or shut her down and scrub it all before something happened that he couldn't live with.

The young man was currently engaged in something that left him pale with terror, blasting down over the edge of the castle's walls. He ducked away, and a blast of energy obliterated the space where he'd been standing. When he got up again, he had his hand to his ear, and was shouting at the thin air.

"Cornelia, Elyon is in serious trouble!" he snapped, "We need you guys out here NOW!"

"Major," one of Letran's aids shouted from back up at the command post, "We've just had a huge energy spike right on top of us! Readings are off the scale!"

This was important news, and something that actually required his attention. However, the Major was thoroughly distracted by a flash of light and a handful of strange figures that appeared in the air over the battle in its wake.

"Major!" another aid screamed, "the fleet is withdrawing, we've got a code orange! The general has ordered full retreat, abandon everything and get out!"

"All units, cease fire!" Letran shouted, his eyes riveted on the human figures flying above the battle's chaos. The troops were quick to obey, despite the apparent insanity of the order, and the sudden silence after so many guns, beams, missiles, and cannons all went quiet at once was enough to chill the soul. "Scope!" he snapped, and held out a hand. A set of high-tech binoculars appeared on demand, materializing from nowhere.

"What are you doing?" Lt. Bird asked, "we need those auto-guns to cover our retreat! I'll grab this barbarian thug and we can use him against the element channels at our convenience!"

"Holy Crap! _Major_!" a third aid shouted down at him, "every wyrm still flying just set a course for us!"

Major Letran scanned the horizon with his scope, but he wasn't looking for wyrms. Instead, he found those flying figures in his magnified view, and the sight of them up close was enough to force the jaded officer's jaw into a clench out of pure amazement.

"Well, Lieutenant, I think I found those missing elementals of yours," Letran said, drinking in the sight of them.

**Next Chapter: Dragon Sisters Part 2**


	6. Dragon Kin Part Two

I'm really happy about how this chapter came out, especially since it represents everything I wanted to write about in this story since I finished chapter three. I really need to learn to cut back on the huge narrative super-structures that don't really interest me and focus on these delightful action sequences and re-designs of adorable characters. I wrote this chapter in a hurry and barely edited, so if it won't show up on spell-check, I probably didn't fix it. Sorry in advance.

**Dragon Sisters**

**Chapter 6: Dragon Kin**

**Part Two**

**Above the Battlefield**

"Everyone ready?" Will asked, her voice sounding somewhat strange after the transformation. Her words were laced with an edge of static like they were coming through a slightly bad radio broadcast instead of from her lips. Of course, they'd all been changed when the Heart of Candracar touched them, and this change wasn't just the usual bonus cup sizes and curves in all the right places.

Professor Starder had said that the Heart enhanced magic by changing their age to the point where their magic power reached its peak. Always before, that just meant they came out of the transformation voluptuous instead of scrawny as they were shoved into magically mature _human_ bodies. Apparently, now that they were dragon kin, beings of pure energy, magical maturity involved a great deal more than a seismic shift in intimate measurements. A mature dragon kin was an entirely different creature from a juvenile, and the Heart had faithfully pushed their ages forward until they grew into the full bloom of their powers.

In response to her quiet query, Will received a full array of nods.

"Alright then. Hay Lin, Taranee, and I are going to go swat some flying lizards. Irma, I want you to go back up Cornelia. Mop up these 'skull-drone' things. We'll all meet back at the castle and figure out what to do about the Artificers."

No one said anything, but Hay Lin and Taranee linked hands with their leader.

"Guys, I kind of think we're on a brand new power level right now." Will gave Irma in particular a grave stare. "Try not to wreck anything by accident."

With that, the three girls vanished in the same stinging flash of light that had brought them all out of the castle's great hall. Irma was left alone in the sky, a veritable tide of black, humanoid shapes rushing along beneath her now that the Artificer's guns were silent. Any moment, they would clear the force-field perimeter and have free reign to destroy Meridian's people.

"Right," Irma said, flexing her strange new body almost gingerly as she hovered, "don't destroy anything I don't intend to destroy. Let's do this."

Pouring on some speed, Irma flashed down until she stood at the very foot of the castle wall. When she was on her feet, her wings stopped buzzing, and she took one last look at herself.

"Scales," she muttered, watching the light play off her new, thick, full, perfectly interlocking coating of aqua-and-green patterned fish scales, "at least mermaids get to have good skin from the hips up."

In truth, it was a fairly petty complaint, especially since most of the scales were covered by her long-sleeved tights. Her transformation had left her thin, patchy, rather eye-catching coat of scales much thicker and more obvious, yes, but it had given her so much more than that. For example, her brown hair had been completely replaced by a mass of fine, soft, delicate blue tendrils that flowed and shimmered like a curtain of cerulean glitter. Her wings, too, were extravagantly beautiful, their aqua-marbled expanses modeled from the fins of some delightful sea creature, perhaps a lion fish or a sea horse. Her ears were longer, her eyes were solid blue pools that flashed in the sunlight, and her fingers were webbed and bore short talons where her nails had once been. In all, she looked like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, except hot. Along with her guardian leotard, which had thickened to become more like a wetsuit than spandex tights, she felt ready to enter a combined surfing competition and beauty contest in Atlantis.

Cornelia suddenly appeared next to her, flowing slowly and smoothly up out of the ground like she was riding an imaginary elevator. She looked like a dirt statue for a few seconds, but then that façade fell away, revealing her newly transformed body. As soon as she saw it, Irma felt a fresh flash of combined jealousy and admiration. If Irma was a beautiful sea monster, then Cornelia was some kind of dryad.

What had once been greenish-tinted skin with a faint layer of swirling vine-like tattoos was now colored like the bark of an ash-grey sapling, complete with occasional brown swatches, but smoother than even sanding and polishing could normally make wood. Her golden hair had become a mass of braids that seemed to be woven of living yellow grass, and fell to her hips in a sturdy spill that bloomed with dozens of different flowers. Her wings had become a fan of huge leaves, almost like she was a butterfly searching for camouflage, her ears were elongated like Irma's, her eyes were twin eternities of green light, and everywhere on her body was the subtle suggestion of vaguely Celtic patterns just under the surface in a darker shade of grey-brown. With her crown of resplendent hair, Cornelia looked like a cross between a young willow tree and a delicately carved wooden statue of a pagan goddess. Just like Irma's, Cornelia's guardian leotard had also undergone a subtle change, its long, flowing, and deeply-slit skirt embroidered with a pattern of knotted vines and foliage.

"We've got about ten seconds," Cornelia said, smiling over at Irma and showing teeth that were shockingly normal on her exotic body. "Do you want to go first, or…?"

"No, please," Irma gave a flourishing bow, "you go right ahead. I need some time to get my shot going, anyway." With that, Irma transformed into water and collapsed to the ground, splashing wildly and seeping into the soil.

Cornelia's grin widened as she held her hands out with her palms up, as though she were offering an imaginary bouquet of flowers to some conquering hero. Nothing happened at first, but when the leading wedge of the massed skull-drones came sprinting through the barely-visible force field, they were met with spectacular violence.

The only way to describe what Cornelia did would be to imagine a bed of nails being held against a paper screen. The field below Meridian Castle was the paper screen, and with a throb of power that shook the whole world, Cornelia shoved the bed of nails up into the world. A million spears of rock, each one eight feet tall and two feet wide at the base, all exploded out of the ground at the same time, rocketing to their full height in a split second. The oncoming horde of skull drones was shattered in an incomprehensible orgy of destruction, thousands upon thousands rent instantly to pieces as thousands more were tossed skyward.

With the barest flick of her petite wrists, Cornelia forced the spikes to explode like bombs, sending rock shrapnel everywhere in a hailstorm of destruction. Before the dust settled, she gave a twirling motion with one wrist, and the broken soil beneath the skull-drone graveyard began to churn like someone was running a thousand gargantuan blenders just beneath the surface. The wide spirals of debris flipped sharp stone shards and huge clouds of dirt through the wreckage, so that even as the skull-drones replicated, they were destroyed anew or sucked down into oblivion beneath the grinding earth. At length, Cornelia stopped, slightly winded by her efforts, and was dismayed to find a new crop of skull-drones replicating just beyond where she'd been destroying them, quickly building toward the numbers they'd had before she began.

"Don't these chumps know when they're outclassed?" Cornelia muttered, trying to come up with a new way to bury and rend the next rush of killing machines.

"Hey, Cornelia!" Irma suddenly slithered back up out of the ground and reformed herself from the water. "I've got something that'll blow these guys away. Do you think you could give me a nice, tall, multi-tiered cliff?"

"Why?" she asked, even as she began to think of how she would do it.

"Oh, you'll see. Just make sure it's as wide as the front of that bunch of robo-killers and faces toward them. I'll do the rest."

Without wasting any more time on questions or speculation, Cornelia faced back toward the castle. With a sigh and a grunt of effort, she raised a fifty-yard thick, fifth-of-a-mile-long platform some 30 stories into the air, effectively giving the foot of the crag upon which the castle stood a new, plateau-sized wall. As quick as she could, she raised an identical platform in front of that up to 20 stories, then a third in front of that up to ten stories. When she was done, she'd moved enough solid rock to build dozens of super-sized stadiums, and when it occurred to her what Irma was going to do with it, she finished them off with gently slanting tops.

Irma quickly flew over until she was standing at the center of the behemoth earth-wall, way down at ground level behind the tallest slab. Now the prep-work she'd done earlier paid off, and it was only a few seconds of concentration before the vast waterways beneath Meridian's crust bent to her will. She knelt down, calling to the water, drawing it into position, and the earth rumbled in agony. On the other side of the earthworks, a new, enormous mob of skull-drones was coming up fast, and Cornelia was just beginning to contemplate another round of wide-area crushing when Irma's attack began in earnest.

First the brook at the castle's feet, and then for ten miles in every direction from the castle, every river, every lake, absolutely every source of water ran dry, sucked into the ground, leaving behind mud and very unhappy fish. Irma went from kneeling to standing in a smooth motion, raising her arms above her head, and all of that water blasted out of the ground and came up beneath her. In the space of a few seconds, millions upon millions of gallons of water rose up along the length of the earthworks like the face of a world-ending tidal wave. At roughly forty stories high, Irma stopped pulling and began pushing.

The leading edge of the water curled over and hit the top of the tallest earthwork with a blow that rocked the world, then blasted down in a tumbling heap until it plummeted off the first cliff. The water gained speed again as it fell a second time, making the landscape buck, and was moving even faster as it shot out off the second cliff. It repeated it all again, and when it finally hit the ground, it was churned into a murderous whitewater and was going at better than thirty miles per hour. Irma floated up at the top, feeding more and more water into the cascade, and was perfectly positioned to admire the destruction she'd wrought.

If it had been possible to load up sixty freight trains, run them up to full speed, and send them hurtling at the oncoming skull-drones side by side, it still wouldn't have come close to doing as much damage as Irma's makeshift flood. The tide came sweeping down the slope of Meridian Castle's great crag in a wide, inescapable deluge, impacting with everything it touched with irresistible force. The skull drone army was swept away as one solid mass, along with all the grass and trees on the hillside, everything crushed together and pulverized into unrecognizable murky debris.

Irma quickly exhausted all the water in the area, forcing her to end the artificial tsunami. But, even as the flood spread out and lost momentum on the flatter ground, the mud and earth it had absorbed kept up its deadly force, leaving behind nothing but a badly-eroded earthworks wall and a scoured hillside.

"Wow, _very_ nice," Cornelia was quick to compliment Irma as she flew up beside her at the top of the huge, temporary waterfall she'd been asked to build.

"Thank you, thank you, I saw that one in a video game once." Irma bore a self-satisfied expression that looked almost predatory on her scaly new visage.

"Great." Cornelia waited a moment for comic effect. "So, how are you going to keep the flood from destroying the city?"

"_The city_?" Irma's eyes flashed wide, their unbroken blue depths flickering with light in her sudden panic. Sure enough, the unbound flood was now crashing toward Meridian's charming wood-and-stone residences with many times more than enough force to flatten everything.

"Mmm, I didn't think you'd thought that one through," Cornelia taunted her friend without malice. "I mean, if _I'd_ wanted to indiscriminately destroy everything in sight, I'd have just raised a volcano. I'm pretty sure I could pull that off right now. But hey, that's just me! Silly of me to not want to leave thousands of honest, hardworking Meridian villagers homeless and despondent—"

"Would you shut up and help me stop the flood?" Irma griped. Together the two of them dug trenches and diverted waterways at high speed, crushing new pockets of replicating skull-drones all the while. The ground force had been shattered, and what had once covered the landscape in a black-and-white tide had met its end at the hands of a more traditional sort of tide. Still, even the smallest fragment of skull-drone wreckage could replicate into a new soldier as long as they still received super-elemental energy from General Thorngrave's command platform. Even as they slowly won the fight to turn back Irma's flood, the earth and water elementals found themselves under attack by new, growing groups of super-strong, soulless killing-machines.

Elsewhere, the battle to solve that particular problem was taking place on a similarly epic scale.

Above Meridian Forest

The wyrms of General Thorngrave's task force never saw the ambush coming. Of course, they could hardly be blamed for missing it, and it wasn't due to a lack of intelligence on their part. The average wyrm is actually very smart for a vicious monster, and they're all controlled by enchanted amulets embedded in their skulls which let their human masters command them from any distance. No, _anyone_ would have fallen for this particular ambush, because who anticipates that the air itself will strike against him?

Of the original fifteen wyrms that Thorngrave had brought to Meridian, five had been slain in combat, four more had been wounded so badly that they'd had to retreat to Siph, and six remained combat effective. These six were cruising in a flying-V formation toward Meridian Castle for a high-speed breath-bombing run when they were suddenly met by the downdraft to end all downdrafts. One moment all was calm, and the next, they were all struck by a spiraling column of air a half-mile wide and so terrifically powerful that it was like God himself had just taken a ball-pin hammer to the face of Meridian.

All six wyrms went rocketing to the ground like bullets, landing at roughly the same time that the downdraft struck the forest. The resulting chaos as all that moving air hit all that immovable ground was almost impossible to describe. The closest one can come is a combination between a huge bomb and a minor, localized hurricane—the land rocked from the initial impact, and then the true destruction began. For a few seconds, everything was a terrifying chaos of random wind currents strong enough to snap tree trucks or pick up a person and fling him for miles. In mere moments, however, the air pressures equalized, and all that was left was an eerie calm, a crater, and a gigantic section of forest where every tree had been knocked over in a symmetrical spiral formation.

"Okay…" Hay Lin gasped, hanging on Taranee's arm as they observed the destruction from a safe distance, "I think I overdid it a little on that one." It was something of an understatement, because if it weren't for her friend's arm, she probably wouldn't even have had the strength to fly.

As she slumped, the details of her transformed body became evident. It was actually a bit difficult to pin down the exact shape of her body most of the time, because her dragon kin form was something like a swirling cloud of blue-grey smoke contained within clear lusterless skin. Now that her power was flagging, the swirling smoke settled into an all-over mottling of blue and grey spots, as though someone had taken a paint brush of each color and flicked its bristles at the pale canvas of her skin for hours on end. Her long hair was bound in a single ponytail much as Yan Lin's had once been when she was a guardian, only this long bundle of hair was overflowing with interwoven black feathers that actually seemed to be part of her rather than mere decorations. She no longer had wings, and two sets of long, blue-and-grey ribbons emerged from the back of her tiny leotard top, swaying gracefully in the wind like the tail of a fancy kite. Like the others, her ears had lengthened and her eyes were glowing pools of her magic, light blue in her case, but Hay Lin had taken on an ephemeral quality all her own, as though she were weightless, and would be carried away by a breeze. Other than the ribbons replacing her wings, her guardian outfit hadn't changed.

"You did your part," Will hovered around and took up Hay Lin's other arm so she could just hang limp and rest for a while. "Taranee, as soon as Hay Lin can fly, we're going to go mop up down there."

"Are you kidding me?" Taranee glanced from Will, to the destruction, and back again quickly. "That shot was incredible! It would have cracked open a mountain! Those things won't be getting back up!"

"Sorry to burst your bubble, Taranee," Will nodded down at the crater where the dust was only now settling, "but it looks like it'll take more than a little whiplash to keep these things down."

Indeed, beneath them, five of the six wyrms were already crawling back up to their legs and stretching their wings. Their spell-shields had absorbed most of the force of the impact with air and ground, and they'd suffered little more than disorientation from the ambush. Only one, whose shields had been damaged by the battle earlier, had struck the ground hard, and now lay broken and burst to pieces in a forest gully.

"Oh _man_ those things look angry!" Taranee whispered, remembering that the magic they'd been spitting earlier had shattered enchanted flying war machines.

"But they also look disoriented..." Will frowned. "We need to attack _now_. Hay Lin?"

"I can fly!" she protested, pulling her arms away from her friends and going into a lazy float between them. "I can fight, too. Just… give me a second…"

"Right, well," Will was already ramping up speed for her attack, "don't push yourself," she shouted as she darted away, "but _hurry_!" Will vanished the next instant, a twinkle of electricity on the air the only thing to mark her passage.

"Okay, so, I guess I'm going first?" Taranee said, not sounding eager in the least. "I just need to concentrate on not setting the sky on fire and setting off a thermonuclear chain reaction, and I'll be fine."

That said, the fire elemental began to power up. Of all the guardians, she was, perhaps, the most changed in this mature dragon kin body, and it never showed more clearly than as she gathered her power and prepared to strike.

Taranee's skin, once an alluring creamy brown, was now black as obsidian and smooth as glass, and the glowing orange cracks that had run through her elemental body were now thicker and more pronounced than ever, making her look like a gorgeous statue molded from fresh volcanic lava. Her hair, usually a misty black color and knotted close to her skull except for a few braids, was now a violent mane of short braids in every imaginable color of fire. Her wings were black and bat-like with vibrant red webbing, her eyes were like twin suns, her ears had grown to points, and she was surrounded by a shimmering of the air as her gathering magic sent out an enormous bloom of heat. The violet of her leotard had been replaced by black and the aqua with orange, making her sleeveless top almost invisible but for its lack of orange fissures and her tights vibrant above red-and-yellow striped leggings. If not for the The Oracle's fireproof glasses still gracing her face, it would have been distinctly difficult to recognize her.

"Let's see," Taranee muttered to herself, as she held out her hands to the sky and brought into existence a small point of intense heat. "Fire pun… fire pun… ug, nevermind." The tiny point of heat bloomed almost instantaneously into a gigantic fireball that hung in the air like a second sun. "I sure hope you homicidal lizards aren't fireproof!" Taranee shouted, and sent the fireball hurtling downward like a vast comet.

The wyrms, in fact, were not fireproof, at least not when this level of heat was involved, and were, as Will had observed, still very much disoriented by their sudden meeting with the ground. Despite their overseers shouting warnings into their brains, the creatures just hadn't yet recovered enough to react to this new attack in time. The blazing comet met the crater Hay Lin had begun and expanded it twofold.

There was nothing fancy about this manipulation of fire energy—it was an explosion of the most ordinary sort, only, well, _gigantic_. The concussive shockwave rocked Meridian for the fourth time that day, and peeled a layer off of the planet as far as a mile away from ground zero. The wash of wind swept the ground in all directions, still moving with gale-force as far away as the battlements of Meridian Castle. A smoke and debris column reached upward from the point of detonation as far as the eye could follow, and it was unimaginable that anything could have survived. Three wyrms managed it, somehow, and came darting out of the smoke in three different directions, furious and ready to kill.

"Ooof," Taranee moaned as her vision blurred and she began to plummet slowly out of the sky, buffeted by the shockwave of her own attack. "Your turn, Will." Moments later, Hay Lin appeared to catch her and support her through the gale.

The wyrms came out of the cloud and immediately began a spiraling search-and-destroy pattern, unaccustomed to being confronted with dangerous flying targets any smaller than an Artrian destroyer. It's rather ironic, considering that the magical auras the elemental ladies were giving off were enough to make so many trained soldiers doubt their own senses, that the wyrms had so much trouble finding their opponents. In the end, it was just that difficult to spot a five foot tall, three foot wide figure against the open sky at more than two miles away, not to mention that their auras were so overpowering that they weren't all that much help in localizing them to more than a general area. In all, it was enough of a challenge that the three battered wyrms were delayed for a few crucial moments before attacking, and that was all the time Will needed.

The wyrms were prepared for another attack from above, and were searching the horizon for their enemies. Thus, Will made a rather expert tactical decision, and used her teleportation power to outflank them, striking from directly below. The coherent beam of blue light that flashed up from the ground and pierced through the first wyrm, shields and all, like it _wasn't even there_, actually bore a striking resemblance to the blast of an Artrian battleship cannon. The beam faded as suddenly as it appeared, and there was a thunderclap as air rushed in to fill the space where ultra-intense heat had shoved it aside. Before the first wyrm could start to tumble from the sky, a five-foot hole seared directly through its central mass, the other two traced the beam to the ground and fired a counterattack.

They didn't even turn their long necks before firing, and the blasts of rainbow light that vented from their huge maws described curving paths through the air as they flashed down to the point Will had fired from. The resulting explosion as these battleship-killing blasts converged precisely at the same point was intense, and far more contained that the extravagant affairs the elementals had used against them. There was a spherical flash of light about fifty yards wide, and when it cleared away an instant later, there was a perfectly round crater where a hillside had been. This attack, too, was accompanied by a violent crack of thunder, because even the air had been eradicated from the area of that magical detonation. It was fortunate, then, that Will wasn't there.

The quintessence elemental reappeared directly in the path of another wyrm's flight, completely given over to her elemental nature, looking every bit like a statue of moving lightning. The wyrm barely had time to register her presence before a massive, curving blade of lightning grew in a flash from the side of Will's body of raging blue-white electricity. The cleaver was at least thirty feet long and eight feet wide, and if one had blinked against the glare of its appearance, he or she would have missed its ultra-fast strike. One moment the blade was on Will's right side, the next it was on her left, and a fan of after-image told the tale of its passage through the wyrm's body. A heartbeat later, the great, draconic beast was flying away in two different directions with all the speed it had held before its encounter with Will's magic.

The victorious elemental was a flicker of thought away from teleporting to safety when the final wyrm's breath caught her from the side. The sensation of having her magical essence forcibly rearranged by the explosion was the first thing like pain Will had felt since she'd awoken under Dr. Starder's ministrations, and the sudden intensity of it was almost enough to drive her to unconsciousness. As it was, it ejected her from her interface with her element, and her body became her physical guardian form just in time for the thunderclap of the explosion to snap in on her from all directions. Will went tumbling through the sky like she'd been flicked by a giant, trailing smoke all the way. Another blast came in from the final wyrm, but met only empty sky as Will finally tossed herself through space.

Miles away, she reappeared with all her tumbling momentum still in tow, flying down at Hay Lin and Taranee like a dragon kin cannonball. Hay Lin was caught off guard, but still managed to put up a padding wall of wind to slow her friend's headlong fall and eventually cushion her into Taranee's waiting arms. The creature that the fire elemental caught was nothing short of dazzling to behold, even with a mild coating of soot-like magical residue from her brush with death.

Just like the others', Will's transformation had built upon what began with Dr. Starder's initial reconstruction. Her skin had been alabaster white and lit with its own internal light before, and now it was all that, but with multiple sources for the light. It was as though Will were filled with a thousand arc lamp-bright fireflies, with tiny blue lightning bolts jumping randomly between their swirling clouds inside of her. Her hair, once frizzed with static lift and glowing like neon, was now a deeper shade of ruby and almost ethereal, as though the strands themselves were spun from opaque red light. Her wings were rather angelic, if feathers could be made of transparent diamonds of gossamer and gauze. Her ears came to points, her eyes were wells of brilliant pink, and she was surrounded by a crackle of restrained energy—being near her was like standing next to an electrical transformer or high-tension power lines. Her outfit was the only one to change nearly as much as Taranee's, with shimmering silver re-coloring her violet, baggy-sleeved top, black replacing her aqua skirt, and her leggings redone in black and white stripes.

"Ouch," Will managed to grumble, and the word came out with a wisp of smoke from her lips. She coughed and vented a cloud of glittering dust, unable to do much more than squirm weakly in Taranee's obsidian arms.

"Don't try to move, Will," Taranee advised her with an urgent whisper, her voice heavy with barely-restrained panic and rage at the injury dealt to her closest friend. "You just took a battleship-sinker on the chin."

"No," Will groaned, and forced herself to sit up and snatch Hay Lin's arm from where she floated nearby. "Gotta _move_!" With a huge effort, she teleported all three of them bare seconds before they were slapped by an extreme long-range blast of wyrm's breath. Such a shot would have been less than useless against a warship's shields, but the three dragon kin would have been badly scorched at least.

The girls landed in a stretch of forest about a mile from the explosion, where Will immediately tumbled to her knees in exhaustion. Her glow dimmed to almost nothing, leaving her hair a lank tangle of dull red strands and her skin the tarnished pearl of an unlit light bulb. She took several deep breaths, and her glow started to return slowly, until she finally had the strength to speak.

"Someone go trash that last one," she gasped out between breaths, "before it finds us again."

Taranee and Hay Lin's eyes met, and they nodded to each other with matching smiles.

"I'll set it up," Hay Lin began.

"And I'll knock it down," Taranee agreed, and they lifted off with twin bursts of magical flair as they both merged with their elements at the same time. Hay Lin merely vanished seamlessly into the sky, but Taranee exploded, directing the force of it out in an expanding ring of fire as she launched upward like a rocket.

The last wyrm noticed Taranee immediately, and sent a deadly blast of breath her way. This was, of course, the whole point of her dynamic liftoff, and Hay Lin followed the breath trail back to the wyrm long before the blast reached Taranee. With an effort of will, the invisible air elemental hardened the sky in front of the wyrm into the rough equivalent of thick steel plating. The wyrm struck it at high speed and _bounced_, destroying its aim and sending it into an uncontrolled spiral. The blast it had sent at Taranee went wildly off course, and Hay Lin quickly caught it inside of a gigantic, swirling vortex before it could recover from its spin-out. The vortex kept it too disoriented to fire, and more importantly, left it relatively still as Taranee lined up a shot from more than a mile away.

The rough human figure of pure flame that lit up the sky so far down-range lifted one hand, and that hand quickly bloomed with red light that was more of a promise of destruction than any particular type of fire. The red light gathered, then contracted to something the size of a baseball. Taranee held out the ball of light in front of her face, aimed it at the spinning wyrm, and blew across it like she was blowing a kiss. The ball took off like a bullet, trailing a cloud of crimson sparkles as it crossed the sky for several long seconds. At the last moment, Hay Lin dropped the vortex, and the red light plowed directly into the wyrm.

This explosion was far more contained than her last one, but was more effective for being concentrated. Rather than a small nuclear device, this blast resembled an extremely large artillery round going off, and when the fireball faded, the last wyrm's remains were plummeting slowly to the ground like some huge, fire-gutted zeppelin.

"Wow, good work, girls," Will said, as she suddenly appeared just behind Taranee's flaming elemental form. She had much of her glow back, but still looked scorched and shaky.

"That was _intense_," Taranee replied, shifting back to a physical body and adjusting her glasses. "I had so much power that… that…"

"That it was hard to control at first, right?" Hay Lin helped her to finish as she melted back into view, the clouds of smoke swirling strongly under her clear skin. "I just wasn't expecting that much magic to come out—I almost knocked myself silly with that first blast."

"Yeah," Taranee nodded, "but after that, it was easier. You just have to… well… _concentrate_."

"I think that's a lesson we'll all have to remember," Will sighed, gazing out over the horrific destruction they'd wrought upon Meridian Forest in their clumsy, terrain-altering first blush of power. "Just look at this place! We did more damage than the bad guys!"

"Oh man, you're right!" Taranee was suddenly fretting at the forest fires that swept the landscape, venting huge smoke clouds. Almost a mile-wide circle of forest was now a barren, ash-filled crater, and no trees stood for miles more around that. As many as five miles away, one could still find the occasional tree knocked over or splintered, and the forest fires were spreading quickly. "I haven't seen destruction like this since I watched that documentary on the volcanic explosion of Mt. Saint Helens. Guys, we're like a bunch of natural disasters waiting to happen!"

"Calm down, Taranee," Will chided her, and buzzed forward to squeeze her into a hug until she relaxed a bit. "We've got it under control now, right? Just think, we could be in… what did the doctor call it? E.R.E.? You know, mindless and crazy and wanting nothing more than to get some cheep thrills with our powers. If we did that much damage by accident, think of what we could do on purpose!"

"That's supposed to comfort me?" Taranee said, sounding miserable.

"It's supposed to put things in perspective," Will began, only for Taranee to stiffen suddenly in her arms. Will checked her friend's face in reflexive concern, but relaxed when she noticed the distant look Taranee always got when she was engaged in telepathic communication.

"Didn't the professor say to avoid telepathy?" Will muttered, but didn't interrupt.

"I guess he never told Elyon that," Taranee answered, looking a bit cross as she spit her attention.

"It's Elyon?" Hay Lin's interest was up, and she looked ready to try and concentrate until she could listen in on the conversation.

"She says the battle has bogged down over near the castle," Taranee reported, "Cornelia and Irma were untouchable, and they've contained things for now, but they can't seem to stamp out the last of those skull-drones."

"Right, well, I guess we know where we're heading next," Hay Lin quipped, and Taranee began to answer her when she suddenly stopped, letting out a choked coughing noise instead.

"Are you all right?" Will asked.

"EEEEEAAAAAHHHHH!" Taranee let out a wail of abject anguish as she clutched her obsidian hands to her short, violently colorful braids, shuddering in uncontrolled spasms of agony. The seizure lasted for an excruciating eternity of five seconds, and then Taranee was dropping to the earth like a stone.

Will and Hay Lin caught her well before she reached the ground, lowering her gently until they could lay her upon a bed of grass. Their terror for their friend was written across their faces as they each struggled to find a single word after that awful shock.

"Girls, can you hear me? Are you all right?" an illusion of Dr. Starder appeared out of nowhere, interrupting the terrified silence.

"Doc?" Will gasped, unbelievably happy to have even the shade of the miraculous life-saver on hand. "What happened to Taranee? What's was that?"

"That…" the doctor answered, "was a shatter bomb. I warned you, I _know_ I warned you, but… nevermind."

"I still don't get it, what happened to Taranee?" Hay Lin was on the verge of tears, the clouds beneath her skin becoming deep grey and stormy.

"A shatter bomb sends a pulse of telepathic energy through the world," the doctor said, his voice even and grim. "To you or me, it's like it never happened, but anyone using telepathy has her own powers turned in upon her mind like an attack."

"Will she be okay?" Hay Lin peeped, hardly daring to hope.

"Her mind is strong, and this transformation of yours should have given her some defense besides." At their continued expressions of distraught confusion, the doctor went on, "I'm sure she's just badly stunned. You need to get her someplace where she can rest—"

Doctor Starder stopped suddenly, totally absorbed by something happening in front of him wherever his real body was at, and his expression when he looked back up was mildly terrified.

"Girls, every Dragon King soldier still standing is heading straight for you, including their commander, their wizards, and what looks like somebody with the power of a world's Heart."

"Hmph," Will growled, suddenly incensed. These were the same people that had dared to hurt her friend. "We laid the smack-down on their dragon-things, so let's see how the rest of them like the same treatment. As soon as I drop T off somewhere safe, we'll get the other girls together and go say 'hi' to these Dragon King cronies."

Intent on making words as good as action, Will knelt down and put a hand on Taranee and then took Hay Lin's hand as well. She winced in concentration, and then winced again like she'd been stung.

"What's the deal?" she snapped, "I can't move us!"

"Wait," Starder's illusion said, his hands moving over some sort of instrument panel or keyboard that was not projected along with his image. "Holy hell! Somebody's tossed a spatial lock spell over the whole damn forest!"

"Spatial lock?" Hay Lin asked, frightened that she already knew what it meant.

"It's like a small-scale, heavy-duty veil. No teleporting, no space folds, no portals," Starder almost groaned. "It only lasts for a few minutes, but there's no way to counter it until it wears off or you get outside its area!"

"This is getting _bad_, Will," Hay Lin pleaded with her eyes, "I know we're all juiced up now, but—"  
"Yeah, we can't chance anything with Taranee down for the count," Will nodded. "Help me fly her out of here. Doc, contact the others on your projector-phone magic and have them meet us on the way out. We'll need someone to run interference—"

The was a sudden, loud beeping noise from the general vicinity of Will's chest, and everyone looked there to find the Heart of Candracar throbbing with brilliant light and an insistent, piercing noise. No one knew what was happening, so they just watched as the beeping and flashing grew in frequency and intensity, and then stopped without warning. The silent Heart was dark, devoid of light and magic, and hung on its chain like a bit of worthless glass.

"_Oh crap_!" Will shouted, looking down to find herself in her scrawny, fifteen-year-old body again. Her simple white dress hung from her immature frame as her glowing skin flared with her new panic. Hay Lin in her white, ill-fitting, man's shirt and short blue skirt mirrored her look of horror, and between them, Taranee was once again a petite and creamy-skinned teen in her red vest and long, crimson skirt.

"Heart?" Will asked, when she finally had the presence of mind to say anything at all, "what's wrong?" She held it up and found it to be dull and lifeless, and it was one of the most terrifying things she'd ever seen. "Uh-oh… I _think_ we broke it."

Hay Lin just stared at her, too horrified for words, and the blue and grey specks freckling her face faded to almost nothing as she paled with gut-wrenching fear.

"Um, Doc?" Will turned to the illusion of Dr. Starder that was still wavering nearby, finding the man to look, if anything, even more stunned than the girls themselves. "Help?"

Dr. Starder looked pale and drawn, even through his illusionary image, and actually seemed to be shaking a bit. Then he looked around at the three young girls, already battered by combat and now virtually helpless as a huge force of ruthless killers bore down on them in overwhelming numbers. Although it was difficult to tell through his nauseated expression, he seemed to grow some spine right there before their eyes.

"Don't worry, girls. Help is on the way."

**Thorngrave's Command Platform, Moments Ago**

General Thorngrave watched the last of his mighty wyrm force go down in flames and felt fear and ambition war ceaselessly in his normally cold heart. He'd dealt with dragon kin before, long, long ago, and their power was every bit as terrifying as he remembered. Why, right before his eyes, three of them had obliterated five wyrms without showing the slightest loss of potency. Admittedly, the wyrms were already worn out by the Artificers and had been ambushed quite magnificently, but the principle of relative force strengths was clear. Comparing a full set of these monsters to his own gaggle of skull-drones, wizards, and The Fang was utterly laughable.

And yet, something inside of him couldn't help but find the overwhelming challenge this represented an exciting and alluring prospect. The past centuries in stalemate with Artria had been nightmarishly dreary, an utter waste of his talents as a commander. Now, he faced the challenge of a lifetime, and to simply leave was out of the question. Of course, it also helped that, should he return empty-handed after losing fifteen wyrms, the Dragon King would forget his near-eternity of service and obliterate him in a fit of rage.

"Scan every communication frequency and energy-type," Thorngrave followed a sudden flash of intuition. "I have a feeling these barbarians are a few thousand years behind on information security techniques."

The staff of wizards and elite soldiers surrounding him on the command platform was still reeling from the sight of the distant battle, with all its earth-shattering explosions and the graphic demise of their remaining wyrm force. He had to slam his hands loudly on the flying platform's safety railing to snap them all back to their duties.

"Sir!" a scry-wizard reported seconds later, "there's been some recent activity on the telepathic band. I think I can localize it to at least one of the class five energy signatures."

"Telepathy?" Thorngrave growled out a sinister noise, his voice changing as he grinned under his red plate-helm. "Delightful! Arm a shatter bomb immediately."

"Um, shatter bomb?" the ordinance wizard sounded uncertain. "Why would we have one of those old things? People stopped using telepathy in combat a month after they were invented!"

"We have one because I packed it into the magazine myself," Thorngrave replied, using a tone that would tolerate no further back-talk. The dubious wizard checked his inventory with a small spell, and looked shocked when he actually found it.

"Wow, sir, how did you know we would need it?" the wizard asked, as he hurried to pull the bomb from the magical place where it was stored, making it appear in his open hand. It was an unimpressive device about the size of a grapefruit, and it began to glow as he cast a spell to arm it.

"I didn't, you simpering imbecile," Thorngrave reminded himself that he couldn't kill the fool for incompetence until _after_ he fired the bomb, "it was merely a contingency plan. If you survive a dozen centuries of warfare," 'which I doubt you will,' he didn't add, "you'll learn that fortune _always_ favors he who is prepared for _all_ possible outcomes."

"Sir, more activity on the telepathic band," the scry-wizard assigned to monitor communications reported. "It's the dragon kin again."

"Wait, one of them is a teleporter," Thorngrave mused out-loud, "cast a spatial lock over the area. The minute it's in place, fire the shatter bomb."

No one argued this time. For all his cold distance and bent toward the vicious, Thorngrave was an inspiring leader. He'd already unconsciously convinced these men that they could take on creatures that obliterated wyrms with nothing but skull-drones and The Fang. The rather moronic ordinance wizard had wanted to remind his commander that a spell as powerful as a wide-area spatial lock would drain most of their elemental energy reserve, but some survival instinct forced him to hold his tongue.

"Spatial lock up!" a wizard reported.

"Firing shatter bomb!" the ordinance wizard said. There was no sensation, but the ball in his hand popped open and released a mild white shimmering that quickly dissipated.

"Shatter successful!" a scry-wizard shouted, sounding surprised despite himself. "Two hits—and one of them was a dragon kin! Total cessation of thought confirmed! She's been knocked out!"

"Set course for that element channel! Full speed!" Thorngrave shouted, voice edged with the thrill of victory. "All forces, converge on their position, ignore the healthy channels and capture that wounded dragon kin! If we can capture even one, our Lord will become unstoppable! And of course, the reward will be a king's ransom!"

The platform accelerated to full speed, wind whipping past them as they sped off to the sound of their skull-drone reserve mobilizing beneath them to follow Thorngrave's orders. The crystal ball in the center of the platform showed symbols representing all of the moving forces, and everything the scry-wizards could see with their powers was also fed in. As they watched, the forces spread out into a u-formation that would eventually surround the elementals and come at them from all sides. There would be horrible casualties, of course, these creatures took out wyrms, for heaven's sake. But, skull-drones were almost impossible to put down as long as the magic reserve held out, and the one elemental was helpless. The Fang, too, controlled enormous power, and was indestructible. The chance for victory was still there.

"Unholy Siph!" one scry-wizard suddenly cursed, and Thorngrave turned to find the man gone pale, a bemused expression plastered across his face.

"What is it?" Thorngrave growled, already imagining some creative counter-move from his nemesis, Admiral Straight.

"Sir, I can hardly believe it, but… the class five energy readings have gone back down to their original ratings! They've just… I don't know… vanished I suppose—and just as quickly as they appeared! Whatever was empowering them must have worn out!"

Thorngrave paused at this news, and for a long moment, he was entirely unable to believe his luck. He _literally_ couldn't believe it, in fact.

"There's no chance that they're masking their power somehow?" Thorngrave asked, cautious whenever any situation seemed too good to be true.

"It would have to be one hell of an illusion, to cover up auras like those," the scry-wizard replied, grinning with almost manic glee.

Thorngrave paused a second time, but he just couldn't find anything else to question. With sudden energy, he threw his armored head back and let out a powerful, maniacal laugh. When his energetic mirth was finally spent, he slapped his hands down on the platform's banister railing again and looked out eagerly over the forest.

"Can't this tub go any faster?" he shouted, "we've got a whole _cosmos_ to conquer!"

**Meridian Castle's Battlements, Earlier**

"—so am I to understand that you were trying to kidnap my friends, guests of my kingdom, even in the midst of this life-or-death battle?" Elyon almost roared, her eyes flashing with anger. She was flanked by Caleb on one side with his boom-stick glowing and Matt on the other, his enormous cannon pointed only vaguely away from the crowd of Artrians she addressed.

"Please, Your Majesty," the haggard-looking Major Letran stood at the center of his forces, "You must understand that the threat the Dragon King represents is bigger than you or me. The only chance to keep this war from spreading all through the worlds is to get your 'friends' into protective custody." All around him, marines in bulky powered armor were hurrying to line up and file onto recovery boats, car-sized flying machines that carried them up to the many boxy pod-carriers above that were waiting to fly them out of Meridian.

"The way I hear it, these _goons_ of yours," she pointed to Lt. Bird and her two muscle-bound associates, who flanked their provisional commander during this diplomatic incident, "broke down the door and tried to place my friends under arrest for no apparent reason. This is while they were receiving life-saving medical care from their doctor, I might add."

"A doctor who is a criminal fugitive from Artrian justice," Major Letran countered. "We're interested in taking him with us, too."

"I was told he fled Artria to escape slavery, and it's a story I find myself very ready to believe," Elyon was using a tone that made her accusations like physical blows against the essentially decent Major. Behind him, Lt. Bird was smirking carelessly and eyeing the Queen and her allies like a cat would watch a mouse.

"Our customs and laws are not yours," the Major didn't miss a beat, "but that doesn't change the fact that Savant Gen Starder is a criminal. Meanwhile, your friends the element channels represent a manifest threat to the peace of all civilization everywhere. The Dragon King will never stop trying to own them, and Artria is the only place beyond his reach. For their own safety and the safety of all peace-loving people, you must convince them to come with us."

This time, the Major scored a hit, and Elyon looked slightly less certain of her righteous indignation. Matt and Caleb just looked even angrier than before, although it was tough to tell past Shagon's golden mask.

"I… I would need all kinds of guarantees on their safety and treatment before I do any such thing," Elyon eventually decided. "Guarantees backed up by the Council of Candracar, _at least_."

"Perhaps there is some merit in that line of negotiations," the Major didn't let his disappointment show. He had no power to make any such agreements with anyone, but no one here knew that. Lt. Bird leaned in on his side and whispered in his ear.

"We have them surrounded by your forces. Let's just capture them and use them as hostages!"

"That Queen is a full-scale Heart," the Major hissed back, "and that winged guy is no slouch either. It'd get bloody in a real hurry."

"So what? It's our only chance! The mission can still be completed!"

"So the lady with the attitude is still up here?" a new voice came up from beneath their feet. Before anyone could wonder where it came from for more than a moment, Cornelia emerged from the stone of the castle's walls to stand between the two opposed factions.

"Cornelia!" Elyon and Caleb shouted their happiness at the same time, and came up from either side to take turns wrapping her in hugs. They spent some time marveling at her changed appearance as Irma shot up from the courtyard well in the form of water and coalesced into a person next to Matt.

"Hey Matt," Irma said, feeling a bit bad for him as Cornelia did her typically efficient job of stealing the lime light.

"Hey Irma," Matt replied, looking her up and down, "I like your new look. It's very 'Atlantian Princess.'"

"Yeah, I know," she preened, showcasing her scaled hands and face like a jewelry model, "I was a bit ticked at first, but it's really starting to grow on me. I mean, look at the way these scales catch the light—it's like I'm wearing a solid coating of sapphires and emeralds!"

"So…" Matt only hesitated for a moment, "how's Will look?"

"One track mind much?" Irma taunted him, and Matt was glad he had Shagon's golden mask to cover the blush he would otherwise have grown. "Nothing to worry about, Romeo, she looks great. Try to imagine the patron angel of synth-pop and electronica music, if she was also a bit goth. Although you might want to wait to smooch with her until she changes back. I get the feeling kissing her would be like sticking your tongue in a power outlet."

"Isn't that how it's supposed to feel?" Matt taunted her. It was actually not so creepy, despite coming from the gigantic frame of Shagon.

"Aww, that's cute," Irma mimed an episode of gagging, "but also gross."

"Anyway," Cornelia was addressing both sides of the standoff on the castle walls, "we more or less drove off the skull drones, although they're still multiplying out there. When we saw that the fireworks were over and those flying geckoes were all toasted, we came back here to wait for the others. We would have just called them ourselves, but apparently, despite being able to follow us through elemental transformations and high-magic combat, our ear-bug-things weren't waterproof… _IRMA_," she shot an accusation over her shoulder.

"Hey, I said I was sorry!" Irma griped right back at her.

"Are they here yet?" Cornelia asked, far more pleasantly.

"Not yet," Elyon answered, "I'm going to contact them. Hold on," she began to concentrate on telepathy and several people spoke up at once.

"That's a bad idea," Irma and Cornelia said at the same time.

"It really is," Major Letran added a moment later, shocked that these people would know about modern anti-communication weaponry. "The threat of—"

"Nonsense," Elyon waved them all off, fully distracted, "It'll just take a second."

No one knew what to say. She was the Queen, after all.

"Apparently, they're all okay," Elyon reported as she spoke with Taranee, so many miles away. "Will took a hit from that magical dragon breath, but she was in elemental form at the time, and it didn't do much more than singe her and knock the breath out of her."

"Oh, man," Matt said, his grip on his weapon tightening.

"I'll tell them to—" She was caught up short, her faced creased into a mask of abject agony, and she collapsed to her knees. Cornelia caught her before she could fall further, but Elyon went totally limp in her arms. When the general commotion and shock wound down, they found the Queen of Meridian to be unconscious and unresponsive.

"Sir," an aid shouted down from the garden terrace where the command post was still operating, "we just detected a shatter bomb detonation!"

"Of course," Major Letran slammed a fist into his palm, "those Dragon King scumbags must have been monitoring the telepathic band. Her Majesty here and whoever she was talking to are going to be unconscious for hours. If it had been anyone less than an elemental and a world's Heart, the detonation would have been fatal."

"Someone is going to pay for this one," Cornelia said, finding a quiet, sturdy section of the battle-beaten wall to set Elyon down. "Irma, you know Will is going to be here any second, get ready to roll."

"I'm ready," she said right away, her expression of concern for Elyon becoming a hard look of barely-restrained violence.

"We really can't allow you to run right into the Dragon King's arms," Major Letran made one last appeal to reason. "I'm sure we can work something out if you all stay here and agree to come with us when the battle is over."

"Save your breath, Major," Lt. Bird cut in, "The Dragon King's paltry forces don't stand a chance against these mighty dragon kin. Let them have their revenge for their friends."

"That's the first sensible thing you've said since I met you," Cornelia gave her an arrogant, nasty glare. Lt. Bird just smiled back, waiting for her opportunity to grab some important hostages and radically alter the diplomatic landscape.

"You know, I kind of expected Will to have poofed over here by now," Irma said, after they'd all waited through a long minute of tense silence. "You don't think something hap—" with a sudden rippling of magical forces, Irma and Cornelia transformed back into their teenage bodies. Other than their physical oddities, their gowns made them look like a princess and her handmaiden, with Cornelia in resplendent green and Irma in a menial's browns.

"CRAP!" Irma got out her shocked noise first.

"What the heck?" Cornelia said, a moment later.

"YES!" Lt. Bird shouted, and her blue energy field suddenly flashed to life just seconds before her two goons activated theirs as well. "Looks like the shoe is on the other foot, ladies. You want to reconsider your position on coming along quietly yet?"

"You can't catch us," Cornelia was defiant, but there was no confidence behind her stand. The fact that they'd just reverted with no explanation at all was enough to terrify her.

"Maybe not, but it would be a real shame if something unfortunate happened to your royal friend here while you were hiding," Lt. Bird's voice was dripping with cruelty, and her rush of satisfaction as Cornelia's green features went pale was obvious.

"You can't threaten foreign royalty," Major Letran protested, finally pushed a bit too far. "Stand down, Lieutenant!"

"I don't take my orders from you, Letran," Lt. Bird turned to spit the words at him, more than fed up with the resistance she'd gotten from the stuffy, higher-ranking officer. Turning her head, however, was quite a serious mistake. She saw motion out of the corner of her eye, but before she could get halfway turned around again, she was punted in the stomach by a full-power blast from a boom stick. Her energy field absorbed the damage, but the force of it was enough to blast her head over heels backward at bone-breaking speed.

"Matt, _now_!" Caleb shouted, already charging his boom-stick for another shot. The huge, winged frame of Shagon leveled the long, rotating barrels of his weapon at the other two special ops soldiers, drilling one of them into ground with beams from his eyes as the other was staggered back and away by a high-speed stream of bullets that exploded into hot gas as they pelted his powerful shields.

The dozen or so marines that had yet to load up on the escape ships turned and leveled their weapons uncertainly on Matt and Caleb. They weren't really sure what was going on, but they'd just seen Artificers attacked by natives. Only the fact that one of the attackers was giving of the same targeting signal as a friendly soldier held them back.

All three special ops soldiers were up in no time at all, and would have converged on the young men and women with deadly efficiency if not for the sudden thunder of noise from up on the garden terrace. The battle came to a sudden halt as the command drop ship that the Major and his staff had flown in on suddenly lifted off with a roar of blue flame from its engines. Jaws flopped open as it was sent through an ugly, dangerous maneuver that left its huge, open side-access doors level with the castle walls next to Matt, Caleb, and the girls.

"IN!" Irma shouted, shocking her friends into action. Matt lifted Caleb in one hand and chucked him across the twenty-foot gap to the open doors, then lifted Elyon's small form in his free arm and flew across after him. Cornelia stomped on the wall, sending a cloud of thick stones out to make a pathway and dashing over it, the stones falling away behind her. Irma blasted a gush of water from her hands to the open doors, then transformed into water and flowed along the wet path before it could fall, appearing on the other side in a wet explosion.

The next second, before the doors could even close, the ship was flung around through another ungainly maneuver as the afterburners flared, throwing it violently off toward the horizon.

"Someone stole my command ship!" Major Letran was dumbfounded, his jaw hanging open as he watched his own drop ship jetting away without him or any of his staff aboard.

"Blast!" Lt. Bird snapped, collecting her two cronies with a word and zipping over toward the line to board the recovery boats, quickly stealing a ride of her own. With Major Letran shouting threats and imprecations at her back, she and her boys went streaking off after the escaping elementals.

**Aboard the Commandeered Drop Ship**

"What the heck was that all about?" Caleb asked, once he and Matt had finally closed the open doors and cut off the roaring wind, leaving the ship sealed up and calm but for everyone's ragged breathing. "I thought the Artificers had betrayed us. What are we doing on one of their ships?"

"Dr. Starder is flying this thing," Irma groaned and peeled herself off the floor, stumbling over to find a seat. All the chairs in the passenger bay were lined up against the walls facing inward, where lots of loose straps were lying around. A bunch of equipment had once been strapped down between the passengers, perhaps allowing them to work as the ship flew. "Will and the others are in a bunch of trouble, and we're the cavalry."

"How do you know that?" Matt asked. He'd shed his weapon and was squatting toward the back of the passenger area. The seats were far too small for him. On the other hand, he'd set Elyon's unconscious form in one of the seats and buckled her in to secure her against the bouncing turbulence.

"Because an illusion of him is standing right here next to us, telling us all about it," Cornelia grumbled, finding a seat for herself. Her tone was just sarcastic enough that the boys weren't quite sure if she was serious.

"This is your Captain speaking," a voice came in over the ship's intercom, a bit weak and nervous and everyone jumped a little in surprise. "We're currently flying directly into a force of about a thousand skull-drones, a dozen powerful wizards, and at least one world's Heart. The plan is to get in, grab your friends, and get back out as fast as possible. Now, if someone's available, I could use a co-pilot up here."

"I'm going," Caleb said, before anyone else could answer. He'd noticed the fear in the man's voice, and it made him nervous. "Sit tight and get ready for things to get hairy."

Everyone nodded, and Caleb made his way to the front of the passenger bay, where a series of small alcoves separated the center of the ship from its cockpit. With some difficulty, he managed to scramble up and over a central console and slide into a seat. Every surface around him was covered in glowing and blinking symbols, and a bunch of fully 3D displays hovered above his head and near his knees. He looked over and found Dr. Starder in the seat on his left, a huge, bulky helmet cover his face.

"Hey Doc," Caleb said, a little bit intimidated by all the complex equipment all around him. He'd never even gotten used to Earth technology, much less all of this dazzling magical stuff. "So, you stole this ship, huh? Pretty sneaky."

"The plan was never to actually steal it," Dr. Starder answered, sounding distinctly uncomfortable as he moved his hands over the consoles in what seemed like random patterns. "I figured if I snuck in here, it would be the last place anyone would look for me, and I could use the ship's instruments to help everyone. This whole grand theft warship thing was a desperation move."

"Right, right…" Caleb paused a moment, then added, "you seem kinda nervous Doc."

"Nervous? I'm freaking _terrified_!" he almost gibbered out the words and was pretty close to simpering once he actually said them. "I'm no fighter, and here I am flying directly into a deathtrap! I've never hurt anybody in my life, the very idea of it makes me ill, but I'm about to be on a battlefield… like… _physically_ on a battlefield!"

"Okay, calm down," Caleb said, his body thrilling with terror as the ship rocked violently in response to the doctor's outburst. "You won't have to hurt anyone, just keep the ship in the air and we'll take care of the rest!"

"It's just," the man was talking to himself now, "I couldn't leave those girls to the Dragon King. This is happening because of me, because I exist, and I knew how to do what no one else could have done. If I hadn't been here, these ladies would have been just five more souls lost to the seduction of elemental existence."

"Hey, now, that's enough of that," Caleb had steel in his voice now, "you saved their lives, Doc, and that was the right thing to do. The fact that this Dragon King joker wants to use them as weapons is not your fault. What those other guys want to do, lock them up in a box somewhere or whatever, that isn't any better."

"Right, well," the doctor at least seemed calmer now, "I'm still responsible in all this. I have to make things right, or at least try to anyway. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't at least try."

"Okay, okay Doc," Caleb tried to change the subject, "why don't you tell me how you managed to steal this thing? Don't ships like this usually have a pilot?"

"Actually, a ship like this practically flies itself," he answered, successfully distracted, "so the pilot is usually just another member of the officer's staff. Of course, I didn't have the codes, but I came to an understanding with the ship's systems. A Savant can break any security that wasn't designed by another Savant, and Savant-designed systems are too complex for regular folks to use."

"Savant… I heard that Major guy call you that, too," Caleb continued to keep the man distracted from his terror as he watched the displays. They were closing on the dots that had to be Will and the others, but so were a whole bunch of angry red dots that had to be the enemy. "What is a Savant, anyway?"

"You see this?" Starder touched his face, indicating the complex tattoo that meandered from his forehead down to his chin. "It's called an eylert. Every Artificer has one. It's like a magical information storage device. If you have one, you can ask it questions, and if the information was put into it in the past, it can answer them. For most people on Artria, that's all it does."

"But not for Savants?" Caleb asked, actually getting a little interested now. He didn't really understand all that well, but it was still interesting.

"A Savant has a special connection to his or her eylert. We can use the stored information as quickly as if it was part of our own minds. It lets us remember everything we see and make connections between information faster than normal people."

"Umm…" Caleb began, completely lost.

"It makes us really smart," Starder said. "Savants can also copy their eylert's information. Basically, parents can pass down everything their family has ever learned to their children, or hand it out to non-Savants like a really, really complicated magical textbook."

"So, why do they try to keep you guys locked up?" Caleb asked, following the natural progression of questions. This time, the doctor hesitated.

"Most Savants…" he began, "aren't really anything at all like me…"

A sudden beeping from the console in front of them saved Starder from having to answer more of that question. He examined a light that looked like any other, and he grew an odd sort of smile.

"We're getting a message!" he said, excited.

"Probably just those jerks wanting their flying wagon back." Caleb grimaced, remembering the naked sadism on that one soldier-lady's face as she cornered Cornelia with a threat on his Queen's life.

"No… it's from the mother ship. What?" he was talking to himself again, "Heart Ship One? _That_ can't be right."

"Whatever, just ignore them," Caleb suggested, not really interested in talking to the soldiers that had abandoned Meridian to those dragon-monsters and tried to kidnap his friends on the way out of town.

"Actually, we can't cut the signal without breaking the device," Starder informed him. "It says the message is directly from Admiral Straight. I hope you're ready to meet a war hero."

**Aboard the Artrian Flagship, "**_**Heartbreaker,**_**" Earlier**

Admiral Straight stared into her holographic view-tank and found her eyes bulging. All six remaining wyrms were obliterated, and the magical pyrotechnics that had achieved that dizzying task had been nothing short of awe-inspiring. That it had been done by only three of the element channels she'd come to claim, virtually effortlessly by these three, was almost more than she could accept at first. After witnessing that, she allowed herself to feel the slightest hope that she would not have to fire the Heartbreaker cannon after all. Too soon, of course.

Minutes ticked by, and everything turned right around again. A shatter bomb detonated, disabling one of the channels and the Heart of Meridian. A spatial lock trapped three of them, including their wounded comrade, miles away from any help. And to put a cap on the disaster, they suddenly reverted from the astonishing heights of class five energy to the very ordinary and unimpressive class two ratings they started with.

"How long would it take to get back down there and give them air support?" the Admiral asked.

"Our fastest destroyers could get down there in six minutes," the tactical officer answered, "everything else a bit later. But, we burnt up a lot of energy getting up here in the first place, even with gravity on our side, the ships would be short on power when they arrived. We need time to charge the energy banks."

"Can we divert the reserve power from the Heartbreak cannon's charge?" she asked next.

"We can, but we would not be able to charge it a second time for a good thirty minutes. That would give this one battleship a few minutes of full-firepower when it got down there some eight minutes from when we start."

"How long before the Heartbreaker cannon is locked on target?" she asked. Once again, a small gasp went around the flag bridge at this question. For a while, they'd all thought they wouldn't need it.

"I'm sorry ma'am," the special weapons technician answered in a tiny voice. "We were tracking our target by her mental signature. We had no way of knowing the shatter bomb would knock her out. We've had to start over—"

"I didn't ask for your excuses," the Admiral's voice was dangerous, "I asked you to give me the estimate."

"T-t-ten minutes," she stammered.

"Mr. Jeffries?" She turned to her intelligence officer.

"Ah… the Dragon King's forces will make contact with the three trapped element channels within the next two minutes. There's no telling how long it will take them to subdue them, lower their spatial lock, and flee the dimension but…"

"It sure as hell won't take eight minutes," Admiral Straight said what everyone was thinking. Skull-drones were _fast_, and The Fang was down there, and she'd become famous by breaking into a battleship, wrecking its engines from the inside, and then somehow surviving the explosion. "It probably won't take two minutes."

No one knew what to say. There was nothing they could do that would make any difference. Even their ace in the hole was impotent. For just a moment, the indomitable Admiral looked beaten. Then, staring into the holo-tank, she saw one icon far, far out of place.

"Mr. Jeffries, why is that drop ship speeding toward the trapped element channels at full military power?" Everyone looked, and everyone was startled to see what she saw. "And… is that a recovery boat speeding hot on their tale?"

"It must be some kind of malfunction…" the intel officer muttered, and one could tell he was confused if he actually questioned his own beloved sensors.

"I actually suspect shenanigans of some sort are a bit more likely." Admiral Straight now bore a truly cryptic smirk. "Get me that drop ship, right now. I want to speak to whoever is piloting it."

The order was obeyed, and long seconds ticked by in tense waiting. Eventually a square of light was projected onto the thin air, and it showed them all the pilot and co-pilot occupying the ship's cockpit. One was an Artificer, but he wasn't wearing any uniform and had a bizarre smile. The other was some sort of native barbarian.

"My goodness, Savant Starder, what possible chain of events could have lead to you commandeering a marine drop ship and flying into deadly combat?" the Admiral asked. Her eyes were laughing, and it was clearly all she could do to suppress a chuckle.

"Wow, so you remember me?" the Artificer asked, clearly surprised. "Well, I've got a better question. What, in the name of all things good and holy, could have possessed high command to unseal the Heartbreaker cannon?"

"This is a matter of the fate of the cosmos," the Admiral answered, and she wasn't smiling anymore. "I wouldn't expect you to understand."

"What I understand," the Savant was clearly furious, "is that the abomination loaded onto Heart Ship One is the most disgusting weapon my mother ever built! Using the Heart of Artria that way—_disgusting_! It was sealed for a reason!"

"What does it do?" the barbarian next to him asked, and the Admiral was in the uncomfortable position of being intentionally ignored.

"If you fire the Heartbreaker at the Heart of a world, while that Heart is on its home world, it will destroy the Heart. Then, the magical chain reaction from that detonation will eradicate the entire planet."

"What?" the barbarian shouted. "You mean…?"  
"They're probably aiming that god-awful thing at Elyon right now." Starder was glaring directly into the screen, boring the stabbing condemnation in his eyes directly at the Admiral. She looked away, unable to face that stare.

"What are we going to do?" the barbarian asked, "We can't let them destroy Meridian! And Elyon—"

"There's no point in worrying about it," the Savant said, "it's out of our hands. We'll just have to rescue the others and get Elyon off world before they can fire. Once she's someplace else, the cannon will be useless to them."

"I don't understand!" the barbarian moaned, turning the screen with the beginnings of hate in his expression, "You have all that power! Why don't you use it to help us? You're no better than this Dragon King guy!"

"It's a matter of the fate of the cosmos," the Admiral said, very quietly. "It's more important than the destruction of any one world."

"I hope that keeps you warm at night." Savant Starder spat the words like a curse. "Goodbye, Admiral." He slammed his fist on the panel in front of him, and the screen blazed out to fuzz.

"Orders, Admiral?" the tactical officer asked, after silence had held sway in the tense bridge for a good ten seconds.

"I'm going to pray," she said, and leaned back into her command chair. "I'm going to pray that that stupid little genius can save his troublesome creations, and failing that, I'll pray he keeps the Dragon King's boys busy for the next nine minutes. _You're_ going to get me that damn cannon lock so I can end this nightmare, once and for all."

The bridge fell back into silence, and a countdown appeared on the screen, nine minutes until Meridian was erased from existence.

**At a Hidden Place**

The silver-haired resident of The Between, coated in her glowing armor and skin sprinkled with glorious jewel-like scales, sat quietly behind the illusions that hid her from the eyes and sensors and scry-magic of both armies and gathered her strength. Her sisters had revealed themselves in all their glory, and it was good. Now they were threatened, and the time for hiding and watching was at an end. Soon, they would all know her, and then they could begin to learn of their destiny.

**Next Chapter: Dragon King, Dragon Queen, and Dragon Sisters**

I'm not sure when I'll get around to writing the next chapter. I hate to say 'the more people who ask me to write more, the sooner I'll get to it' but I would be lying if I said anything else. Even this much is only here because someone wrote me a very pleasant e-mail and reminded me how much I enjoy this storyline. That said, I will certainly write more of this, eventually, even if no one says anything. I just enjoy the potential of these characters that much.


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